Critique of Pure Interest

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Modern Idealism, as developed by Berkeley and
Kant and their successors, was mainly epistemological in nature. That is to
say: the arguments they used to establish the central Idealist thesis – that
reality exists only in or for the mind – were mainly epistemological
arguments, based on analyses of knowledge and sense experience. They reasoned
basically as follows: Since we can know
reality only insofar as it is sensed and conceptualised by us, we literally can
have no evidence of any reality beyond our sensations and concepts, and thus
beyond our consciousness. All that we are justified in postulating, therefore,
is the reality internal to our consciousness, the organized whole of sensations
and concepts we ordinarily call “reality”. This, arguably, is the master
argument for modern Idealism.

Although I am greatly attracted by Idealism, I am critical of modern, i.e. epistemological
Idealism. In my view, we should accept Idealism on ontological grounds, i.e.
because it offers the best explanation of reality, and not primarily on
epistemological grounds. As I intend to argue in a following post, epistemology
alone can never provide a sufficient justification for the Idealist thesis. In
particular, the master argument for modern Idealism remains vulnerable to skeptical
attacks. Forfrom the mere fact that knowledge of objects is only possible of
objects within consciousness, it does not follow that all objects are within
consciousness; there might still be unknown or even unknowable objects. To
this skeptical retort, modern Idealism has no satisfactory answer, precisely
because it rests its case on our epistemological confinement to consciousness.
If we are indeed trapped within the circle of consciousness, then – as the
epistemological Idealist emphasizes – we cannot prove the existence of a
reality outside of consciousness; but then
neither can we disprove that existence. This is the weak spot of modern
Idealism, the point at which it remains vulnerable to skeptical
counter-attacks. To prepare the way for this critique of epistemological Idealism,
this post explains why the Idealisms of Berkeley, Kant, and their successors
took this epistemological form.

The Way of Ideas and Its skepticism
To understand why modern Idealism took this epistemological form, we have to
place it in the context of its origination, namely, the Way of Ideas developed by Descartes, Locke and their followers, and
the radical epistemological skepticism to which it led. As explained in a previous post on
this blog, the Way of Ideas led to skepticism because it had ‘imprisoned’ the
knowing subject within the “circle of consciousness”, hiding external reality
behind a “veil of perception”. As the Cartesian philosopher Arnauld put it: “We have no knowledge of what is outside us except by
mediation of the ideas within us.” (Arnauld 1964 [1662]: 31) Thus
arose the skeptical question: If all we
know directly are the ideas within our consciousness,how can we know if these ideas correspond to a reality outside our
consciousness, indeed, how can we know there is an external reality at all?
We cannot, after all, step outside our
consciousness in order to inspect its correspondence, or lack thereof, with
external reality. This threat of skepticism was sharply felt by Descartes,
Locke, and their successors, some of whom – most famously Hume – went on to
argue that skepticism was indeed inescapable.

It was to counter this threat of skepticism that Berkeley and Kant developed
their respective versions of Idealism. As both of them pointed out, the skepticism
induced by the Way of Ideas turned on the assumption of a reality external to
consciousness; strike that assumption, they argued, and the threat of skepticism
vanishes. If reality is ‘just’ a product of the mind itself, then surely its
knowability can pose no problem for us?

George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

Berkeley’s Idealist Rescue of Common
Sense
Berkeley had designed his Idealism particularly with the intent to save common
sense from skepticism. Common sense says that the objects we perceive by our
senses are indeed as we perceive them: they have the colours, smells, tastes,
auditory and tactile qualities we perceive in them. The Way of Ideas, however,
had placed all such “secondary qualities” within consciousness, locating the
real object outside the latter, as the external cause of those sensations. When
we eat an apple, for example, we see its redness, taste its sweetness, feel its
smooth skin, etc. But according to the Way of Ideas, all these sensations are
not qualities of the apple itself; the real apple is just some material
structure in space and time of which we know nothing except what physical
science tells us (and even the truth of physics became doubtful after Hume’s
critique of causality). For Berkeley, this skeptical doubt concerning common
sense, induced by the Way of Ideas, was absurd: “Upon the common principles
of philosophers, we are not assured of the existence of things from their being
perceived. And we are taught to distinguish their real nature from that which
falls under our sense. Hence arises Scepticism and Paradoxes. It is not enough
that we see and feel, that we taste and smell a thing. Its true nature, its
absolute external entity, is still concealed.” (Berkeley 1969 [1713]: 3)

It was therefore to redeem common sense that Berkeley argued for Idealism,
which in his case amounted to the thesis that sensible objects do not exist
unperceived: “Their esse is percipi,” as Berkeley famously put it (1995
[1710]: §3). Perceptible objects, he argued, are nothing but bundles of
sensible qualities in consciousness. Thus, through his Idealism (or
“Immaterialism” has he called it), Berkeley could restore
the common-sense belief that when we eat an apple, and see its redness, taste
its sweetness, etc., we are eating, seeing and tasting the apple itself, not
just its appearance as distinct from the real thing. The real apple, for
Berkeley, is this bundle sensations;
there is nothing beyond it. Berkeley made the same point by contemplating a
cherry (fruit, apparently, lending itself very well for Idealist argumentation…):

“I see this cherry, I feel it, I
taste it […]: it is therefore real. Take away the sensations of softness,
moisture, redness, tartness, and you take away the cherry. Since it is not a being distinct from sensations; a cherry, I say, is nothing but a
congeries of sensible impressions, or ideas perceived by various senses: which
ideas are united into one thing (or have one name given them) by the mind;
because they are observed together.” (Berkeley 1969[1713]: 117)

In his Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley makes his alter-ego
Philonous (Greek for “Lover of mind”) respond as follows to the insensible
matter beyond sensory experience defended by Hylas (Greek for “matter”):

“I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my senses, and leave things as
I find them. To be plain, it is my opinion that the real things are those very
things I see and feel, and perceive by my senses… A piece of sensible bread,
for instance, would stay my stomach better than ten thousand times as much of
that insensible, unintelligible, real bread you speak of… Away then with all
that Skepticism, all those ridiculous philosophical doubts. What a jest is it
for a philosopher to question the existence of sensible things, till he hath
proved it to him from the veracity of God1; or to pretend our
knowledge in this point falls short of intuition or demonstration! I might as
well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and
feel.” (Berkeley 1969 [1713]: 90-1)

As Berkeley admitted (see idem: 110), it is a bit
strange to defend common sense by declaring that perceived objects exist only
within the mind – a view that directly violates common sense, for which
perceived objects ‘evidently’ exist outside the mind – but, according to
Berkeley, it is the only way to save the reality of the sensible object within
the context of the Way of Ideas. Idealism is the bitter medicine that common
sense must take in order to cure it from the illness of skepticism.

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

Kant’s Idealist Rescue of CausalityFor Kant, it was a different aspect of the skepticism
induced by the Way of Ideas that brought him to accept Idealism. What worried
him was not so much the affront to common sense as the affront to physical
science presented by Hume’s skeptical attack on causality. As Kant noted in the
Prolegomena, it was Hume’s attack on
causality that first aroused him from his “dogmatic slumber” and stimulated the
development of his “transcendental Idealism” (Kant 2001 [1772]: 5). Hume had
shown, convincingly according to Kant, that our causal claims about reality are
thoroughly unsupported by the sensations caused in us by external objects. We
say, e.g., that fire causes smoke, but all the evidence we have is that
sensations of smoke regularly follow sensations of fire. In the sensations
themselves we find no reason why one should follow the other. Moreover, we
cannot generalize from a finite number of past observations to universal
claims: the fact that up till now sensations of smoke have followed sensations
of fire does not guarantee that this will be so in the future as well (the
problem of induction). As Hume put it:

“Thus not only our reason fails us in the discovery of the ultimate connection of causes and effects, but even
after experience has informed us of their constant
conjunction, 'tis impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our
reason, why we should extend that experience beyond those particular instances,
which have fallen under our observation.” (Hume 2003 [1739-40]: 66)

Kant was deeply disturbed by Hume’s attack on
causality. His respect for the physical science developed by Copernicus,
Galileo and Newton was so great that he simply could not stomach Hume’s
dismissal of causal laws. The stunning success of the new science, especially
Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion and gravitation, meant that Hume had to be wrong. And where he went
wrong, according to Kant, was in his assumption that causality, if it exists at
all, must be a feature of external reality, in other words, that causal
connections must be connections between real objects, independent of our
consciousness. But, as Kant argued, such external objects are “nothing to us”.
Objects become something for us, i.e. they become accessible to us as
experienceable and knowable objects, only if they conform to our forms of cognition, and causality is
one such form. Raw sensations do not yet give us experiences of objects. The
sensations have to be ordered by our forms of sensory intuition (space and
time) and our forms of conceptual understanding (the categories, prime among
which is causality); only then do we experience a single, ordered, integrated
reality consisting of interconnected objects. This, according to Kant, explains
our ability to make objective causal claims: because causality is not a feature
of external reality but rather a cognitive form in our mind, a form to which
objects must conform in order to become experienceable and knowable.

Kant’s Idealism, then, extends only to the forms
of empirical reality, not to the sensory material structured by these forms.
This is why Kant calls his philosophy “transcendental Idealism”, the term
“transcendental” being his technical term for what pertains to the a priori
forms of consciousness: “I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather
with our a priori concepts of objects
in general.” (CPR: A12) In extension,
Kant speaks of the “transcendental subject” as the subject who applies the a
priori forms of cognition to the sensory material.

Ultimately, the necessity of the object to conform to our forms of cognition
has to do with the fundamental role Kant accords to self-consciousness in experience and knowledge. This point is often
described, rightly, as the cornerstone
of Kant’s Idealism. According to Kant, a process or state in my consciousness
counts as an experience or belief only if I can be aware of it as my experience or my belief, thus only if it belongs to the unity of my consciousness (a consciousness that
forms a unity precisely because it is mine,
i.e. because all episodes and states in it are related to me as their
underlying subject). For a mental episode or state to be mine, then, I must as
it were be able to prefix it with the qualifier “I think…”. By prefixing “I
think…” to a mental content, such as an impression of redness, thus by thinking
“I think (or rather I see) redness”, I indicate that the content belongs to the
unity of my consciousness. As Kant puts it:

“The I think must be able to accompany all my
representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could
not be thought at all, which is as much to say that the representation would
either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me… The thought that
these representations […] all together belong to me means, accordingly, the same as that I unite them in a
self-consciousness […].” (CPR: B132,
B134)

According to Kant, the ultimate function of the forms of space and time and the
categories of the understanding is to effectuate
this unity of self-consciousness (a unity that Kant therefore calls
“transcendental”, since it underlies the application of the transcendental
forms of cognition). Thus only by placing all my mental episodes and states
within a unified spatiotemporal network of causal relations can I recognize
those episodes and states as mine, as belonging to my (self-)consciousness. The
resulting integrated unity of empirical reality, then, is for Kant only a reflection or projection of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness unto
the unorganized manifold of raw impressions. The unity of the object, and
thereby the object as such (because there is no object without unity), is
really a manifestation of the unity of the subject’s self-consciousness. In
this sense, as later German Idealists would put it, the principle of subject-object identity is the central
principle of Kant’s Idealism.

The Epistemological Nature of Idealism
after Kant and BerkeleyAlthough the Idealisms of Berkeley and Kant differ
greatly, they have roughly the same goal – to counter the epistemological skepticism
engendered by the Way of Ideas – and use roughly the same strategy to achieve
that goal, namely: argue that we can only
know objects which are in or for consciousness, such that supposedly external
reality falls away as irrelevant and unknowable, in which case the skeptical
threat, too, falls away. The only reality left standing, then, is the
reality inside consciousness. This, to repeat, is the master argument for
modern Idealism – an argument either explicitly repeated or at least implicitly
accepted by later German and British Idealists. They all stood on the shoulders
of Berkeley and Kant, striving to improve or complete their ground-breaking but
still imperfect Idealist systems (for the Germans, of course, Kant was more
important, but the British Idealists drew on both Berkeley and Kant). As such,
the German and British Idealists took over the epistemological agenda of Berkeley
and Kant and remained within their epistemological mode of reasoning. For all
of them, epistemology remained the prima
philosophia, the foundational “first philosophy” that had to precede and
ground all other theoretical endeavours. And even if later Absolute Idealists
(such as Schelling, Hegel, Green and Bradley) went on to draw more ontological
and metaphysical conclusions concerning the mind-dependence of reality, they
did so ultimately because Idealist epistemology demanded it. As Frederick Beiser
notes: “Although absolute idealism is indeed metaphysics, and in the very sense
prohibited by Kant […], its metaphysics is necessary to solve the outstanding
problem of Kant’s philosophy according to its own guiding principle.” (Beiser
2002: 369)

Notes1. An obvious reference to
Descartes’ appeal to God as the guarantor of the veracity of our perceptions,
PS.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

This post is part of a larger project I am working on:
a critique of the epistemologically motivated Idealisms of Berkeley, Kant, and
the post-Kantians. I am greatly attracted to Idealism, but I think we should
accept it primarily on ontological grounds, i.e. because Idealism gives the
best explanation of why reality exists and why it is as it is. Hence my
criticism of the Idealisms of Berkeley, Kant, et al., because for them Idealism
was primarily epistemologically motivated, Idealism being their solution to the
problem of epistemological skepticism as it arose within the early modern
philosophy of consciousness advanced by Descartes, Locke, and their followers.
As I will argue in a next post, modern Idealism, as an answer to this threat of
skepticism, fails miserably (thus the only remaining reasons for accepting
Idealism must be ontological). To prepare the way for this critique of
epistemological Idealism, this post explains how the problem of skepticism
arose in the early modern philosophy of consciousness, or the “Way of Ideas” as
it was known to Descartes, Locke and their contemporaries.

The Way
of Ideas
There were two main, interconnected forces driving early modern philosophers
towards the Way of Ideas and its epistemological centralization of consciousness.
One of these forces was the desire for certain knowledge, which arose from the
quarrels between the Church and the new natural science of Copernicus and
Galileo, which rose all kinds of thorny issues concerning the authority of
Faith and the powers of Reason. Here, famously, Descartes used the cogito ergo sum argument as a way to
ground the certainty of knowledge on the self-evidence of consciousness’
knowledge of itself. Thus, the range of certain knowledge became limited to
individual consciousness and its ‘contents’ (generically called “ideas” or
“representations”; Kant spoke of “Vorstellungen”). According to the proponents
of the Way of Ideas, then, the subject knows primarily what is inside the
“circle” of his consciousness; only those contents are immediately present to
it. All things outside consciousness are known mediately, by conjecture on the
basis of what is inside consciousness (sensations, feelings, concepts,
thoughts).

The other force that drove early modern philosophers
to embrace the Way of Ideas was the atomism – or “corpuscular philosophy” – of
the new natural science. Reviving (and transforming) the atomism of Democritus,
the proponents of the new science advanced the hypothesis that all natural
phenomena are explainable in terms of tiny particles of matter, “corpuscles”,
interacting mechanically in space. This, however, led to the question of how to
explain sensory qualities such as colour, smell, sound, and taste, which are
notoriously subjective. What colour something appears to have or how it sounds,
tastes or smells can differ from person to person, depending on one’s physical
constitution and the surrounding environment (thus, a thing’s colour changes
with the light falling on it; things can taste and smell differently when you
are sick, etc.). However, like the atoms of Democritus, the corpuscles of the
new science were supposed to exist objectively, independently of our
consciousness of them. They were, moreover, supposed to be so small as to be
imperceptible and thus as being in themselves without colour, taste, smell,
etc. Hence, like Democritus, the corpuscularians – including Descartes and
Locke – concluded that such sensory qualities were merely the effects in our
minds of the collisions of corpuscles on our sense organs. Such sensory
qualities, then, are only subjective and do not reveal the objective qualities
of the corpuscles, which consist merely of solidity, spatial form and position,
and motion. This distinction between subjective and objective qualities became
known as the distinction between secondary and primary qualities. Whereas the
primary qualities, such as spatial position and motion, are objective,
measurable, and mathematizable, and thus are crucial to natural science, the
secondary qualities convey no trustworthy information about the reality outside
our consciousness.

The general picture that thus arose was of a knowing
subject locked inside his “circle of consciousness”, with external objects
impinging on it from the outside, causing perceptions within the circle. “We
have no knowledge of what is outside
us except by mediation of the ideas within
us,” as the Cartesian philosopher Arnauld (1964 [1662]: 31) summarized it. Such
was the overall conceptual framework within which the Way of Ideas operated.
And although this focus on consciousness was partly motivated, notably in
Descartes, to provide a secure foundation for knowledge, the irony of the
situation was that the Way of Ideas ended up fostering a radical
epistemological skepticism. For if certainty pertains only to what is inside
consciousness, how then can we know what is outside consciousness, the external
reality? If all we know with certainty are the contents of consciousness, how
can we know that these contents correspond to external objects? After all, as
the problem was frequently put, we cannot step outside our consciousness in
order to inspect its correspondence, or lack thereof, with external
reality.

The Veil
of Perception and the Cartesian Circle

The problem is sometimes put in terms of a
veil-of-perception theory which has been attributed to Descartes, Locke, and
other philosophers of the Way of Ideas. On this theory, our sensory experiences
of external objects do not give us cognitive access to these objects but rather
form a ‘veil’ or ‘screen’ hiding them from our view. So the medium we use to
know external objects, our sensations and ideas, blocks our very access to
them. Thus Barry Stroud describes Descartes’ sceptical conclusion in his First Meditation as “implying that we
are permanently sealed off from a world we can never reach”: “We are restricted
to the passing show on the veil of perception, with no possibility of extending
our knowledge to the world beyond. We are confined to appearances we can never
know to match or deviate from the imperceptible reality that is forever denied
to us.” (Stroud 1984: 33-4) Similar veil-of-perception theories have been
attributed to Locke, Berkeley and Hume (cf. Bennett 1971).

The radical nature of the epistemological problem
created by this veil-of-perception theory is well illustrated by the desperate
solution offered to it by Descartes. In his Meditations
on First Philosophy he famously argued that the only way to ‘pierce
through’ the veil of perception, in order to reach the objects in themselves,
is by evoking God, whose goodness would guarantee the veracity of our
perceptions, such that “all things which I perceive very clearly and distinctly
are true” (Descartes 1996 [1641]: 24). But to this solution, of course, the
skeptic can easily respond by asking how Descartes can know for sure that God
exists. If our ideas form a screen between us and external reality, then surely
they would also screen us from the true nature of God, if He exists at all.
Descartes had an answer to this, but few would find it convincing. It could
even be argued that it is downright circular. Descartes argued that we find
within our minds an idea of an infinite being, thus an idea which we as finite
beings cannot possibly have produced; thus, it can only have been put in our
minds by our Creator, “like the mark of the workman imprinted on his work”
(Descartes 1996 [1641]: 35). Descartes’ assumption, however, that a finite
being cannot form any idea of infinity, is rather questionable. Therefore
Descartes also had recourse to a version of the ontological proof of God’s
existence. But, as was already pointed out by critics in Descartes’ time, this
makes his argument for the veracity of clear and distinct ideas rather
circular. For Descartes cannot know that this proof of God does not contain any
error unless he assumes that his clear and distinct perception of the steps of
his reasoning guarantees that the proof is correct. So Descartes has to
presuppose the veracity of clear and distinct ideas in order to prove the
existence of God, which he then invokes as the guarantee of this very veracity
– a conundrum known as the “Cartesian circle”.

The
Problem of Primary and Secondary Qualities in Democritus, Locke, and Berkeley
The Way of Ideas, then, fostered epistemological skepticism by imprisoning the
knowing subject within the circle of his consciousness, hiding external reality
behind a veil of perception. It is often said that this type of skepticism was
exclusively modern and cannot be found in premodern times. This is by and large
true, but not entirely. It is true that for Pyrrhonism, the dominant form of
epistemological skepticism in antiquity, the gap between what is in
consciousness and what outside it didn’t matter much (Pyrrhonism was mainly
concerned with showing that we can have no definitive criterion of truth, since
every proof of such a criterion must either be circular or presuppose another
criterion of truth, for which then the same problem arises). Nevertheless, the
problem of the gap between consciousness and external reality was not
completely unknown in classical philosophy, as shown by the remarkable case of
Democritus, the "laughing philosopher". Not only did Democritus, with
his atomism, anticipate the modern scientific worldview, he also anticipated
the modern distinction between primary and secondary sensory qualities, as well
as the epistemological skepticism induced by this distinction. In one of the
few surviving fragments of his work, Democritus stages a striking dialogue
between the Intellect and the Senses:

“Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by
convention bitterness, by convention colour, in reality only atoms and the
void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from
us that you take your evidence?”

In other words: if the secondary qualities do not
convey objective information about the atoms, how can we ever know about them?
How, in particular, can we know their primary qualities, since we cannot
experience a thing’s spatial position and motion apart from its colour, sound,
etc. If we disregard all secondary qualities, external objects become utterly
unobservable to us. This means, as Democritus realized, that the atomic theory
undermines the very credibility of the empirical evidence on which it rests.
Democritus’ point was later repeated by early modern philosophers, notably Berkeley
in his critique of Locke.

Locke conceded that secondary qualities give us no
insight into the true nature of external objects, but like Descartes he
remained steadfast that we can nevertheless know these objects by observing
their primary qualities, e.g. spatial position and motion. Thus Locke claimed
that “the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and
their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas produced
in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance to them at all” (Locke
1996 [1689]: 51). Berkeley objected – much as Democritus had argued some 2000
years earlier – that we can observe a thing’s primary qualities only through
its secondary qualities, and thus that our beliefs about the primary qualities
of external objects are as problematic as the secondary qualities we attribute
to them. Thus, Berkeley writes: “In short, extension, figure, and motion,
abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where therefore the
other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, in the mind and
nowhere else.” (Berkeley 2003 [1710]: 35)

Locke and
the Problem of the ‘Thing in Itself’
In this way, however, Berkeley only aggravated a skepticism that was already
present in the inaugurators of the Way of Ideas. We have already seen how
Descartes felt the sceptical challenge and how he attempted to meet it by
invoking God as the guarantor of the veracity of his “clear and distinct
ideas”. Locke, too, felt this challenge. Although Locke thought (pace Berkeley) that we can know an
external thing’s primary qualities, he also thought that we could not know what
that thing is in itself, independent from its relation to us and other objects.
Primary qualities, after all, are thoroughly relational, pertaining to a
thing’s position in space and motion relative to other things. But what is an
external thing in itself, apart from those relations? This, as Locke conceded,
we cannot know, since we are ‘locked’ (pun unintended) inside our consciousness
and cannot inspect objects as they exist outside of consciousness. Thus, what a
thing is in itself, what the Aristotelians called its “substance”, was for
Locke merely a “supposed” something “I know not what” (Locke 1996 [1689]: 123).
For Locke, therefore, even the new natural science, despite its huge empirical
success in the work of Galileo and Newton, yielded only opinion, not knowledge.
Such sceptical modesty concerning the success of the new physics was in fact
widely shared in early modernity, even by those who were directly involved in
the development of the new science, such as Mersenne and Gassendi in France and
John Wilkins in England. For all of them, our ‘imprisonment’ in consciousness
precluded any knowledge about the true nature of external reality.

Hume’s Critique of Causality
The authority of epistemological skepticism was further cemented by David Hume,
who specifically undermined the causal claims of natural science, i.e. the
claim that the scientist’s “laws of nature” refer to real causal connections
within external reality. Hume followed Locke in holding that all belief begins
with “impressions”, i.e. sensations, passions, emotions, which are the
primitive imprints of external objects on our passive sensibility. We then form
“ideas” which are the recollections of these impressions, their “faint images”
or “copies” in memory. Hume argued that what guides us in these recollections
of impressions, and thus in the formation of ideas, is the associative law of
similarity: impressions which are sufficiently similar to each other get
mutually associated, and thus form an idea. For example, our sense impressions
of particular fires start over time to evoke recollections of each other due to
mutual association, and this gives us the general idea of fire. Finally,
beliefs emerge because these ideas, too, get linked to each other on the basis
of association. To give an obvious example: in the past we have often
experienced one sort of impression, e.g. of smoke, as immediately following
upon another kind of impression, e.g. of fire, and this causes the general idea
of smoke to become associated with the general idea of fire. This, according to
Hume, is the full extent of what we mean when we say “fire causes smoke”. There
is nothing more to our concept of causality, according to Hume, than this
regular, inductively based association of one idea with another:

“We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that
of certain objects, which have been always
conjoin’d together, and which in all past instances have been found
inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only
observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction
the objects acquire an union in the imagination. When the impression of one
becomes present to us, we immediately form an idea of its usual attendant […].”
(Hume 2003 [1739-40]: 67)

For Hume, then, the necessity we associate with the
laws of causality, i.e. the idea that if one thing happens then another thing
must happen, is nothing but the strength of this association, the power exerted
by habit over the workings of our minds. We project this feeling of necessity
onto the world, seeing the connection between one object and another as a
necessary link between cause and effect. But, according to Hume, this is just
an illusion, albeit a very powerful one. If we analyse our ideas more closely,
Hume argued, we find no intrinsic connection between them that could substantiate
a causal claim, such as that fire causes smoke. Imprisoned as we are within the
circle of consciousness, we cannot know the real causal connections between
external objects, if there are any at all. All we can know, Hume concludes, are
the impressions and ideas of those objects within consciousness, and the merely
associative connections between those impressions and ideas. Thus the causal
laws of natural science evaporate into subjective feelings of necessity as we
have been habituated to associate one idea with another.

The Mind-Body Problem and the Crisis of the Causal
Theory of Perception
In sum, the Way of Ideas fostered epistemological skepticism by imprisoning the
knowing subject with the circle of consciousness, hiding external reality
behind a veil of perception. But it fostered such skepticism also in another
(though closely related) way, namely, by inviting the mind-body problem. For
how can mind interact with the external and supposedly material world if they
are so very different, as the Way of Ideas suggests? The external world, after
all, insofar as we can know it, is knowable only through its primary qualities,
such as solidity, spatial position, and motion. For all we know, therefore,
external reality is nothing but solid bodies interacting mechanically in space.
Hence, of course, Descartes’ definition of the external world in terms of “res
extensa”. But consciousness is very different from this world of extension,
since ideas appear to have no solidity, no weight, no well-defined spatial position
(if ideas can be said to be in space at all, they must be somewhere in my head,
but where exactly?), and they do not interact by bumping into each other as
material bodies do. Moreover, the conscious subject appears to have the
capacity for free will, but free will seems impossible in a material world
governed by causal determinism (pace
Hume). Thus, consciousness appears to be in an entirely different realm of
being, the immaterial realm of “res cogitans” as Descartes put it. Locke, too,
drew the conclusion that mind must be immaterial, and thus categorically
different from the material world which we can know through its primary
qualities.

But, to repeat, if mind and matter belong to
ontologically distinct realms, how can they possibly interact? Descartes
wavered on this question, sometimes allowing mind-body interaction in the
pineal gland, at other times doubting the possibility of such interaction; to
Princes Elisabeth of Bohemia, with whom Descartes corresponded extensively, he
admitted that this problem vexed him greatly and that he had no good solution
to it. Locke was more resolute in that he openly declared the problem
insoluble, there being no possibility for mind and matter to interact, except
through divine intervention. As Locke argued, all you can get from spatial form
and motion are other spatial forms and motions, and since the contents of
consciousness are neither spatial forms nor motions, they cannot be caused by
matter; nor can they exert causal influence on matter. However, since mind and
matter obviously do interact, Locke felt compelled – much like Descartes in his
solution to the problem of skepticism – to invoke God, who must have
“superadded” mysterious properties to material objects, over and above their
essential primary qualities, rendering them capable to cause sensations and
ideas. Thus in his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, Locke writes:

“[B]ody as far as we can conceive being only able to
strike and affect body; and Motion according to the utmost reach of our Ideas,
being able to produce nothing but Motion, so that when we allow it to produce
pleasure or pain, or the Idea of a Colour, or Sound, we are fain to quit our
Reason, go beyond our Ideas and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our
Maker.” (Locke 1996 [1989]: 237)

Obviously, no skeptic will be persuaded by this appeal
to God in order to explain mind-body interaction. That Locke feels compelled to
invoke divine intervention in this context only goes to show the deepness of
the problem. And apart from being an ontological problem concerning the place
of mind in the material world, it is also an epistemological problem, and one
that aggravates the skepticism already induced by the Way of Ideas. For insofar
as the causal interaction between matter and mind becomes mysterious, it
becomes equally mysterious how perceptions can convey information about
external objects. For here the only possible theory seems to be some version of
the causal theory of perception, such that perceptions carry information about external
objects because they have been caused by these objects, i.e. by the
impingements of material objects on our external sense organs. Locke accepted a
causal theory of perception, and he used it to explain how we can know external
objects. Although the secondary qualities caused in our minds by external
objects do in no way resemble those objects, as Locke admits, the situation is
different with the primary qualities, i.e. with our perceptions of solidity,
spatial position, figure, motion, etc. Here, according to Locke, our
perceptions do resemble the objects by which they have been caused. By causing
perceptions in us, then, external objects convey to us information about their
primary qualities. And, for Locke, this is the only way we can know external
objects, since according to him all knowledge starts with sensory impressions,
the mind being a tabula rasa prior to experience. Hence the dire consequences
of the mind-body problem. If the causal interaction between mind and matter
becomes mysterious, to such an extent even that we need to invoke divine
interaction to explain it, then clearly the causal theory of perception is of
little help in explaining the veracity of our perceptions. Due to the mind-body
problem, then, the epistemic position of the subject under the Way of Ideas
deteriorates even further: not only is the subject shielded from external
objects by a veil of perception, imprisoned in the circle of consciousness; the
only way for external objects to pierce through that veil – by causing perceptions
in us that resemble their primary qualities – falls away by being a complete
mystery. And even if we accept mind-body interaction as an unexplainable yet
undeniable given, we still have the problem raised by Berkeley (following
Democritus) that we really have no perception of primary qualities apart from
secondary qualities…

Friday, March 30, 2018

In various posts on this blog I have sketched
the rough outlines of a contemporary version of Absolute Idealism – ‘Absolute
Idealism 2.0’ – which is both ontological
and mathematical in nature. It is
ontological, not epistemological, in nature in that its main motivation is to explain
reality rather than just our knowledge of reality. Its fundamental concept is
the ontological self-grounding of
self-consciousness, i.e. the idea that self-consciousness – due to its circular,
self-referential nature – grounds its own existence and is in that sense causa sui. This makes possible, in my
view, an Absolute-Idealist answer to the most fundamental question of ontology,
namely, Leibniz’ question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Here
Absolute Idealism can answer: there is something, rather than nothing, because
self-consciousness is causa sui. In
my view, this ontological prioritization of self-consciousness as the
explanation of reality as a whole – including physical reality – is confirmed
by recent developments in the philosophy of mind (notably the Hard Problem of
Consciousness) and of physics (Russellian Monism, the role of observation in
quantum mechanics, the anthropic principle, and Wheeler’s idea of the
self-observing universe).

Metaphysics continuous with science
Obviously, this self-consciousness I appeal to in order to explain reality as a
whole is not the individual, finite self-consciousness embodied in physical organisms.
Rather, it is a universal, infinite,
absolute self-consciousness that is ontologically prior to time and space.
I consider this assumption of an absolute self-consciousness as a metaphysical
hypothesis that is justified to the extent that it helps us to explain reality.
It is, therefore, a form of metaphysics, but one that aims to be continuous
with science. In my view, Absolute Idealism is justified only insofar as it
accords with the scientific world view. This also explains the mathematical
orientation of my approach to Absolute Idealism. Physics, after all, shows that
mathematics is the deep structure of
physical reality. Thus, the Absolute-Idealist explanation of reality as a whole
in terms of absolute self-consciousness can only work if it also explains this
ontologically fundamental role of mathematics.

Royce’s mathematical view of the
Absolute
In my view, we find the required link between mathematics and absolute
self-consciousness by focussing on the recursivity
of the latter, i.e. on the fact that self-consciousness, in being its own object
of awareness, is also aware of its self-awareness, and aware of that awareness
of its self-awareness, and aware of the awareness of that awareness of its self-awareness,
and so on ad infinitum. As the
American Idealist Josiah Royce has pointed out, this infinite recursion of
self-consciousness is isomorphic to the recursion that defines the natural
number system ℕ (i.e.
the recursive successor function S(n)=n+1,
which starting with n=0 generates 1,
2, 3 …). In this way, we can see the absolute self-consciousness, through its
inner recursivity, as aware of all natural numbers. From here, as I have argued
in different posts, it is only a small step to seeing the absolute
self-consciousness as a ‘cosmic computer’, given the fact that computation is
standardly understood in terms of mappings from ℕto ℕ.

The Absolute as ‘cosmic computer’
Since physics shows the basic computability of all physical processes, we can view
the physical universe as a privileged subset of all the computations going on
in the absolute self-consciousness. But why is this subset privileged? Why does
the absolute self-consciousness ‘think’ the computations that constitute this universe rather than any other
universe? Two facts suggest an answer: (1) the anthropic principle in physics,
which points out that the universe seems ‘just right’ for the evolution of
life, and (2) the tautological fact that the aim of absolute self-consciousness
is to attain complete knowledge of itself. Thus, it stands to reason that
insofar as the absolute self-consciousness computes at all, it pays special
attention to those computations that “simulate” intelligent, self-aware
organisms. For by focusing its attention on those computations – e.g. the
computational structure of the human brain – it sees its own essence reflected
in the medium of mathematics. This gives us the following hypothesis: the
universe is that proper subset of computations in which the absolute
self-consciousness sees its own essence best reflected. It is, to repeat, only
a hypothesis, which becomes acceptable only insofar as it enables us to explain
reality, in conformity with the scientific world view.

Closeness to Neoplatonism
Looking for historical precedents of this approach to Absolute Idealism, we
arrive first and foremost at Neoplatonism, especially as developed by Plotinus.
Plotinus was unique among the Neoplatonists in that he accorded a fundamental
role to self-consciousness in the self-causation of the Absolute, i.e. “the One”
in his terminology. According to Plotinus, the
One is the consciousness it has of itself and as such it exists
because it is conscious of itself. Thus,
Plotinus writes that the One "so to speak looks to himself, and this
so-called being of his is his looking to himself, he as it were makes himself
[…]." (Ennead VI.8.16, 19-23)
In my view, this insight into the ontologically self-grounding nature of the
absolute self-consciousness is precisely what we need to answer Leibniz’
question as to why there is something rather than nothing. In this respect,
then, Plotinus is a major inspiration for my approach to Absolute Idealism.

The mathematical aspect of Neoplatonism
But not only that; the insight into the link between mathematics and absolute self-consciousness
can also be found already in Plotinus. This is, perhaps, not so surprising,
given the well-known influence of Pythagoreanism on (Neo-)Platonic thought. The
Pythagorean idea that numerical relations and geometrical forms are
constitutive of reality was already dear to Plato himself, and only gained importance
with the further development of Platonism. Thus the “emanation” of reality from
the One was for all Neoplatonists also a mathematical process, a multi-leveled
unfolding of increasing multiplicity out of a primordial unity. Plotinus was
not unique in this. Neither was he unique in his technical development of
mathematical ideas (in this respect, in fact, Plotinus was rather weak). He was unique, however, in the connection
he forged between the self-consciousness of the One and the mathematical
unfolding of emanation. Here he virtually anticipated Royce’s insight into the infinite
recursivity of absolute self-consciousness as the generative source of the
natural number system.

Plotinus and Royce
This becomes clear when Plotinus writes about the second hypostasis, Intellect,
which is the first self-image generated by the self-consciousness of the One:
“[W]hen it sees itself it does so not as without intelligence but as thinking.
So that in its primary thinking it would have also the thinking that it thinks
[…].” (Ennead II.9.1, 49-59) Plotinus
then goes on, in the same passage, to argue that we should not stop here, we
should rather add “another, third, distinction in addition to the second one
which said that it thinks that it thinks,” namely, “one which says that it
thinks that it thinks that it thinks”. And then Plotinus asks rhetorically:
“And why should one not go on introducing distinctions in this way to
infinity?” Thus Plotinus clearly indicates that the recursion involved in
Intellect’s self-thinking is endless and as such generates infinite
multiplicity. In this way, one can say, the self-thinking of Intellect amounts
to an endless self-multiplication.

In this way, Plotinus clearly anticipated Royce’s insight into the link between
the natural number system and the infinite recursivity of absolute
self-consciousness. In fact, I think that Plotinus took this insight a great
deal further than Royce did. For Royce, this insight remained something of an
afterthought – quite literally, as his ideas about the mathematical nature of
absolute self-consciousness were only expressed in the “Supplementary Essay” to
his The World and the Individual. Royce
never fully embraced a Neopythagorean, mathematical view of the universe. Plotinus,
of course, did embrace such a view, given his Neopythagorean commitments. For
this reason, too, my approach to Absolute Idealism owes more to Plotinus than
to Royce (the other reason being Plotinus’ insight into the self-causing nature
of absolute self-consciousness, which is more or less lacking in Royce).

The self-reflection of the Absolute in
Neoplatonism
There is also a third reason why I like Plotinus. Earlier I said that we can,
perhaps, explain the physical universe as the computational self-image of
absolute self-consciousness, i.e. as its self-reflection in the medium of
mathematics. The fact of the matter is that this emphasis on creation as a
self-imaging or self-reflection of the Absolute is also thoroughly Neoplatonic
in nature. Emanation is for Plotinus essentially a process of imaging and
re-presentation, where a higher reality creates a lower reality as its own
image (thus material Nature is the image of Soul, which in turn is the image of
Intellect, which finally is the image of the One). In this way, of course,
Plotinus takes over, and develops further, the Platonic theory of participation,
where empirical particulars are seen as the images or shadows of ideal
archetypes.

Plotinus systematizes the Platonic theory by seeing the One as the ultimate
archetype that creates, in successive stages, its own images (Intellect, Soul,
Nature). Although Plotinus remains frustratingly implicit about this, it seems
clear to me that this theme of imaging is intimately related to the
self-consciousness of the One. That is to say: because the One is essentially self-consciousness, it creates
images of itself, images in which it reflects itself and through which it enhances
its own self-awareness. This seems to me the most logical interpretation of
Plotinus’ theory of emanation, where each lower hypostasis is the image of the
preceding hypostasis: this entire sequence of images is nothing but the
unfolding of the primordial self-consciousness which is the self-caused essence
of the One.

Neoplatonism as Absolute IdealismOne possible misunderstanding should be avoided:
Plotinus' claim that each hypostasis produces an image of itself should not be
understood as meaning that this image exists independent or outside of its
source. For Plotinus makes it quite clear that each later hypostasis exists
only inside the preceding hypostasis. Thus, Nature exists inside Soul, which in
turn exists inside Intellect, which finally exists inside the One. In this way
Plotinus can say that “all things belong to It [i.e. the One, PS] and are in It”
(Ennead, V.4.2). In this way, Plotinus transformed Platonism in a
thoroughgoing monism where only the One really exists and all other levels of
reality are somehow produced inside the One as the Hen Kai Pan (“All-In-One”).
Thus it becomes clear that Plotinus’ Neoplatonism is essentially a form of
Absolute Idealism, since the One is for Plotinus nothing but the consciousness
it has of itself. The entire sequence of self-images produced by the One should
be seen as a sequence internal to the One, an internal unfolding of the One's
self-contemplation.

Monday, March 19, 2018

In 1818 Caspar David Friedrich painted his iconic Wanderer above a Sea of Mists. It
expresses perfectly the philosophical vision of German Romanticism: Nature as
the Art of the Absolute, the mirror in which The Subject sees its unfathomable
depths reflected – just as Friedrich’s wanderer looks out over the cloud filled
canyon, contemplating his own destiny in the vastness of the landscape.

We are celebrating, then, a birthday. But, so we might ask, what is there to
celebrate? The painting is surely not without its merit (we, as public, can still
imagine the wanderer’s state of mind, even if we no longer buy into its
underlying idealist metaphysics). But, admittedly, Friedrich was not the best
of painters. He was prone to cliché and overstatement, as shown by such truly unpalatable
paintings as The Cathedral and The Cross in the Mountains. Although
perfectly executed, Friedrich’s Wanderer
above a Sea of Mists evokes a similar feeling of uneasiness, perhaps
precisely because of its technical perfection. We find it too clean, too smooth
a representation of a sentiment that we have come to distrust anyway: the idea –
or rather, the inchoate feeling – of a fundamental kinship between the human
soul and the creative power that has wrought this magnificent landscape. We no
longer believe in perfection, just as we no longer believe in a kinship between
soul and nature. Indeed, the word “soul” has lost its meaning for us entirely.
We, late- or perhaps even post-modern Westerners, have become cynical. And to a
cynic, Friedrich’s paintings must certainly appear as childish and naïve.

Detail from The Stages of Life (1835)

But
is this something to boast about? We may hurl accusations at Friedrich’s
painting – cliché, sentimental, outdated – but it hurls its own accusation
right back at us: “Why are you so cynical? Is that a good thing? Does cynicism
make you happy? Is cynicism truly necessary?” In that sense, the intended
effect of Friedrich’s paintings – to arouse spiritual self-contemplation by
reflection on (or in) a landscape – still works, but now it works more indirectly.

For already in Friedrich’s own time, his paintings worked indirectly, at one
remove, since they typically involve a human figure – such as the wanderer staring
over the sea of mists – who undergoes spiritual feelings and who, through
sympathy, communicates them to us. We are supposed to have these feelings mediated
by identification with the human figure as he or she is enclosed by the magnificence
of the landscape. Sometimes Friedrich’s paintings show several people – often
two, sometimes more, but five seems to be the maximum – whose feelings and
thoughts occasioned by some landscape are communicated to us in a similar way (see
e.g. Evening Landscape with Two Men, The Stages of Life and The Chalk Cliffs on Rügen). But the effect arguably works best when there
is just a single figure in the painting, one fragile human being whose solitude
and powerless isolation heightens by contrast the overarching cosmic community
and creative power inherent in nature – at least according to the Romantic
imagination (and here, besides the Wanderer
above a Sea of Mists, we should also mention The Monk by the Sea as a powerful example of this effect).

Detail from The Monk by the Sea (1810)

But we, as cynics, no longer share the Romantic imagination. Therefore, as I
said earlier, the intended effect of Friedrich’s paintings works even more
indirectly now, at double remove we might say. For as Friedrich’s paintings
hurl their own accusation at us, questioning our complacent cynicism, we are
still moved to self-contemplation by his landscapes. But now it is no longer
our own soul, let alone some Absolute Ego deep within us, which is reflected
back to us by Friedrich’s landscapes. What is reflected back to us is rather the
abyss of our own emptiness, our own lack of soul, our loss of the Absolute, the
‘Death of God’ that we have endured “after Auschwitz”, after the derailment of Social
Progress in Max Weber’s “golden cage” of capitalism (a cage, moreover, that for
most people is not golden at all, but rather made of cold hard iron), after the
scientific “disenchantment of the world” (Weber again), after the industrial
and consumerist destabilization of nature, after the failure of liberal
democracy to effectuate real change for the better, after the public loss of
confidence in politics, after the loss of confidence in Truth...

Our global situation, then, is on all accounts dire. Let us therefore seize the
opportunity presented to us by the bicentennial of Friedrich’s Wanderer above a Sea of Mists – the opportunity
to look deep within ourselves, in order to re-examine our late- / post-modern
condition…

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Readers of this blog will probably know that I have a
thing for Absolute Idealism. One of the things I like about it is the neat
answer it gives to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is there something rather
than nothing?” Absolute Idealism can be summarized as the claim that everything exists because it is thought
and/or experienced by an Absolute Mind, which in turn exists because It
thinks/experiences itself. Thus, the Absolute Mind constitutes its own
existence by being conscious of itself, and should therefore be defined as Absolute Self-Consciousness. According
to Absolute Idealism, then, there is something, rather than nothing, because
Absolute Self-Consciousness is self-producing.

I think this answer to Leibniz’s question is attractive because (a) we know –
with Cartesian certainty! – that self-consciousness exists, and thus that this
theory latches on to a real phenomenon, and (b) because it fits the
contemporary philosophical landscape rather well, a landscape which has changed
dramatically as a result of the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The latter has
plunged scientific materialism / physicalism into a crisis, sparking a
remarkable return of interest in consciousness oriented ontologies, such
as Panpsychism, Russellian Monism, and different varieties of Idealist Monism,
including Absolute Idealism (cf. Sprigge 1983; Hutto 2000; D'Oro 2005).

I also think, however, that if we are to make Absolute Idealism work, we have
to get away from Hegel, for several reasons. One reason is – to put it bluntly
– that Hegel just isn’t a very good philosopher (and now I am pissing off a lot
of people). It is certainly not the case that Absolute Idealism “culminated” in
Hegel, as is often said, as if his system were the be-all and end-all of the Idealist tradition. That, of course, is
how Hegel likes to describe his own philosophy, as the ‘Closure of History’ no
less, where the “Absolute Spirit” finally comes to complete self-consciousness
– but really that is just self-mythologization. It is quite shocking to see how
many people have been taken in by that myth and accept the view that
Hegelianism is the culmination of the Idealist tradition.

Hegel

Hegel’s notorious obscurity
I share the view, common in much of analytic philosophy, of Hegel as a very
sloppy and unnecessarily obscure thinker, who opportunistically twists and
turns his dialectical method and categories so as to smooth out the rather big
wrinkles in his system. The
obscurity of Hegel's prose is well-known and has convinced many interpreters
that the philosophical value of his work is questionable. I tend to agree with
that view. Hegel’s obscurity,
though suggestive of deep and difficult thoughts, functions in my estimation as
a smoke screen behind which he hides the many unmotivated transitions and
inferences in his system (notably in his Logic).

Robert Pippin sees a “puzzling
irony” here: “Simply stated, Hegel seems to be in the impossible position of
being both extraordinarily influential and almost completely inaccessible.”
(Pippin 1989: 3) But, although surely ironic, there really is nothing puzzling about
this. It seems clear that Hegel has been so influential precisely because of his obscurity, which allowed
all different kinds of interpretations to be superimposed on his texts. Thus
Hegel offers something for almost everyone: left-wing, right-wing, Christian,
atheist, romantic, rationalist, postmodernist, neoconservative, metaphysical, anti-metaphysical…
Now, of course, some multi-interpretability affects all the great philosophers.
But in Hegel this multi-interpretability takes on such a massive scale that one
starts to wonder if there is any coherent meaning to his thought at all. In
this light, Hegel's claim regarding the scientific character of his system
looks particularly ridiculous. As Pippin notes, there is nothing “remotely
resembling a consensus about the basic position of Hegelian philosophy”
(ibidem). But if any such consensus is lacking, I see no point in taking the
Hegelian system seriously. For what, then, is this system, what does it
say? This remains totally unclear.Dialectics? No thanks, I prefer
mathematicsI also have more theoretical reasons for rejecting Hegel, having to do with
the inherent inadequacy of his thought. One reason is the fact that not dialectics but rather mathematics
appears to be the basic structure that underlies the texture of empirical
reality. Contemporary physics, after all, is thoroughly mathematical in nature.
If Absolute Idealism is going to work, it must accord a fundamental role to
mathematics. The Absolute Mind that ‘thinks up’ empirical reality, must do so
according to mathematical principles. As the physicist James Jeans famously put
it: “[F]rom the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the
Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.” (Jeans 1937: 167)

It is well-known that Hegel’s attitude to mathematics was rather condescending
and revealed a substantial misunderstanding of the nature and importance of
mathematics (cf. Royce 1959: 526-7). That is partly why, in developing the
outlines of a new Absolute Idealism, I am not looking to Hegel, but rather to
Absolute-Idealist thinking prior to
Hegel, notably the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, who accorded a fundamental role to
“Number” in the “emanation” of reality from the absolute self-consciousness of
the One – as well as to Absolute-Idealist thinking after Hegel, notably John Wheeler’s theory of the Self-Observing
Universe, which basically reconstructs the philosophy of Absolute Idealism in
the medium of quantum physics and information theory.

Hegel’s basic mistake
Hegel’s dialectics fails especially with regard to the central principle of
Absolute Idealism, namely, Absolute Self-consciousness and its self-creating
capacity. The dialectic generalizes Spinoza’s dictum that omnis determinatio est negatio (“every determination is a
negation”). Thus the dialectic maintains that everything is what it is by differing from what it is not, such that
dependence on “otherness” is internal to every identity. Now, this may well be
true for finite things, for the multitude of entities inside the universe. But it becomes illogical when applied to the
Infinite, i.e. the Universe as a Whole, the Absolute. By definition, there is
nothing outside that Whole, so what could its dialectical counterpart – its
‘Other’ – possibly be? This is Hegel’s fundamental mistake: the extension of
the dialectic to the Absolute.

The dialectical conception of self-
consciousness: the self must first
become its own other in order to
become and know itself...

In this way, Hegel arrives at
a dialectical conception of
self-consciousness as the – illogical – foundation of his version of
Absolute Idealism. On this conception, Absolute Self-Consciousness is only
achieved through the mediating contrast
with the Not-Self (the object), such that the Absolute Subject must first “posit” the Not-Self before it can
“posit” itself as a determinate Self (via the negation of the Not-Self, the
notorious “negation of the negation”). Hence Hegel’s claim that the Absolute
must be understood, not as the ontologically first, but rather as the last, as
the end result of the universal dialectical development, when all otherness has
finally been “taken back” by the Absolute Spirit: “Of the Absolute it must be said that it is
essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly
is” (Hegel 1977: 11). For Hegel, then, the Infinite is ontologically later than the finite, as it can only come about through the negation or “sublation” of
the finite.

But the Absolute, as that which explains all of reality, cannot be “essentially
a result”, because result of what? By definition, nothing can precede
the Absolute. So how could the finite possibly precede the Infinite? Moreover,
if the reality of finite things could exist by itself, then the very need to
postulate the Absolute as their ground would fall away, and we would be left,
not with Absolute Idealism, but rather with empiricist positivism… So the cause
producing the Absolute can only be the Absolute itself, such that the Absolute
is both beginning and result, cause and effect, simultaneously. Furthermore,
nothing can mediate that transition from cause to effect, because the Absolute
must already be the Absolute right from the start; it must immediately be its own result. The
self-causation of the Absolute, then, must be an immediate ‘event’, not
mediated by otherness, and therefore fundamentally non-dialectical. This also follows from
reflection on the possibility of self-causation. It is clear that the
self-causation, which timelessly ‘kick-starts’ reality, cannot in any way be
mediated; it must take place immediately, ‘in one fell swoop’, or it doesn’t
take place at all. Suppose, a contrario, that a hypothetical
self-causing cause C first has to effectuate a mediating cause C’ which
only then produces C itself. In that case self-causation would clearly
be impossible. C only has causal power when it exists, but it exists
only as soon as it has caused itself. This means that it can’t cause C’
prior to causing itself. Therefore C’ can’t be causally prior to the
effectuation of C. Therefore self-causation is only possible at once: the self-causing cause must immediately be its own effect.

Plotinus

Neoplatonic Absolute Idealism
Rather than to Hegel, then, I think we should (re-)turn to Neoplatonic Absolute
Idealism, as developed primarily by Plotinus. I already noted the positive role
Plotinus accords to mathematics in his account of how reality flows from the
One. But it is also with respect to the required immediacy of Absolute
Self-Consciousness that Plotinus’ thought is superior to Hegel’s. Plotinus saw that
the self-causation of the One could only be an immediate ‘event’ (outside of
time) and therefore he also saw the self-constituting self-consciousness of the
One as an immediate self-awareness, an undivided self-intuition, where the
intuiting and the intuited are identical (for Plotinus’ view of Absolute
Self-Consciousness, see here).
For Plotinus, then, the One exists by itself, prior to and independent of the
rest of reality – which, as we saw, is what is needed if a concept like “the
One” (which is simply the Plotinian version of the Absolute) is to be able to ‘shut
up Leibniz’. (Schelling’s vision of the Absolute, at the time of his Identity
System, as the undivided unity of subject and object, is simply a repetition of
the Plotinian One in the context of German Idealism.)

Exactly how the absolutely simple self-intuition of the One generates
mathematics is, however, something that is left more or less unexplained by
Plotinus – which, perhaps, is unsurprising in light of the still primitive
state of much of mathematics in Plotinus’ time. I think, however, that the
revolutionary developments in mathematics that took place in the early decades
of the 20th century – notably the development of set theory and of
the theory of computation – will enable us do what Plotinus failed to do,
namely, explain mathematics and the mathematical nature of physical reality on
the basis of Absolute Self-Consciousness. For some suggestions about how this
could be done, see
here, here
and
here.References-D’Oro, Giuseppina (2005), “Idealism and the philosophy of mind,” in: Inquiry
48 (5): 395-412.
-Hegel, G.W.F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller.
Oxford University Press: Oxford.
-Hutto, Daniel D. (2000), Beyond Physicalism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
-Jeans, J. (1937), The Mysterious
Universe. London: Penguin Books.
-Pippin, R.B. (1989), Hegel’s Idealism:
The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
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Historical Conceptions of Being. New York: Dover Publications. -Sprigge, Timothy L.S. (1983), The Vindication
of Absolute Idealism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A central development in recent philosophy of mind is the increasing adherence
to, and elaboration of, a distinction between reflective and prereflective
self-consciousness. This
development has gone hand in
hand with a remarkable confluence and cross-pollination of different
philosophical traditions, from phenomenology (notably the seminal contributions
by Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre) and the Heidelberg School deriving from
Henrich’s reading of Fichte, up to contemporary analytical philosophers of mind
such as Levine, Kriegel, and Williford (for overviews, see Zahavi 1999; Kriegel & Williford 2006; Frank 2015). This degree of consensus between
philosophers from very different theoretical backgrounds is remarkable and
suggests that the concept of prereflective self-consciousness latches on to
something real, a theory independent reality. In this post I explain the basic
idea of prereflective self-consciousness, why we need to distinguish it from
reflective self-consciousness, and the importance of this distinction to
philosophy of mind at large.

M.C. Escher, Self-Portrait in a Spherical Mirror

The paradoxes of the reflection model The easiest way to
understand prereflective self-consciousness is by contrast with reflective
self-consciousness, which is self-consciousness in the mode of ordinary
object-consciousness. In reflective self-consciousness, the subject is aware of
itself in much the same way it is aware of other objects in the world. The
claim that object-consciousness suffices to explain self-consciousness is known
as the “reflection model of self-consciousness”: it basically sees
self-consciousness as resulting from a turning
around (re-flection) of object-consciousness away from external objects and
unto the subject itself. Despite its prominence in Western philosophy, notably
in early modern philosophers from Descartes to Kant, the reflection model has
come under increasing attack in philosophy since Kant. It has become
increasingly clear that the reflection model suffers from a number of
paradoxes, infinite regresses and vicious circles. To explain
self-consciousness, then, reflection does not suffice: we must postulate a suigeneris
form of self-consciousness, different in kind from reflective
object-consciousness. The adjective “prereflective” indicates this special type
of self-consciousness.

Below I will discuss the paradoxes of the reflection model in more detail. For
now, a few examples will suffice. To repeat: the reflection model explains
self-consciousness as the redirection of object-consciousness away from
external objects and unto the subject itself. But how does the subject know
that its new object, of which it thus becomes aware, is indeed itself and not
another external object? The difficulty is nicely illustrated by the example of
Ernst Mach who, sitting in a Vienna bus, noticed “a shabby-looking school
teacher” (“ein herabgekommener Schulmeister”) sitting across from him… until he
realized he was looking in a mirror (Mach 1922: 3, n.1). The lesson is that
mere object-consciousness, if it is accidentally turned towards the subject,
does not intimate that the object one is aware of is indeed oneself – to achieve that self-awareness, a further act
of the mind is required, a mental act irreducible to object-consciousness.
Thus, the reflection model fails to explain self-consciousness.

The model can evade this difficulty only by claiming that the turning around of
object-consciousness towards the subject happens by no means accidentally but
with the intention to get the subject in view: the subject intends to know itself and therefore turns its object-consciousness
towards itself. This solves the problem of failed self-recognition (as in the
Mach example), since the object is intended as oneself from the start, but only
at the price of circularity. For how can the subject intend to know itself by means of object-consciousness if it isn’t
already aware of itself to some extent? If the subject were completely oblivious
of itself, it could not even intend
to know itself. As the analytical philosopher Sydney Shoemaker notes:

“[I]f one were aware of oneself as an object in such cases (as one is in fact
aware of oneself as an object when one sees oneself in a mirror), this would
not help to explain one’s self-knowledge. For awareness that the presented
object was φ, would not tell one that one was oneself φ, unless one had
identified the object as oneself; and one could not do this unless one already
had some self-knowledge, namely the knowledge that one is the unique possessor
of whatever set of properties of the presented object one took to show it to be
oneself.” (Shoemaker 1984: 105)

The reflection model, then, can explain self-consciousness only by presupposing
self-consciousness. Thus, the model either fails or is guilty of circularity.
Of course, it is not to be denied that reflective self-consciousness is in fact
possible: I can, and occasionally do, observe and think about myself as one
object among the other objects that populate the world. The point is, however,
that this reflective self-consciousness is facilitated by a pre-existing – and
therefore pre-reflective – self-consciousness, in a mode different from
object-consciousness. As Dan Zahavi notes: “[W]hen one does in fact succeed in
taking oneself as an object, one is dealing with a self-objectification which
in its turn presupposes a prior nonobjectifying self-awareness as its condition
of possibility.” (Zahavi 1999: 6-7)

The self-registration view of consciousness
The primary motivation behind the notion of prereflective self-consciousness
may be the correct understanding of self-consciousness as such, but it
certainly is not the only motivation. The notion of prereflective
self-consciousness is central to philosophy of mind in general because
self-consciousness is taken to be crucial for consciousness as such. That is,
even conscious states such as thinking about and perceiving an external object,
say, a tree, although they are ostensibly not
about the thinking and perceiving subject, nevertheless seem to presuppose
self-consciousness. This claim, that all consciousness presupposes
self-consciousness, and thus that self-consciousness is ubiquitous in all
conscious states, is known as the Ubiquity Thesis (the term was coined by
Kapitan 1999; following common usage, I will refer to this thesis as
“Ubiquity”). If Ubiquity is correct, and if reflective self-consciousness
presupposes prereflective self-consciousness, then the latter must be central
to our understanding of consciousness in general. A closer look at Ubiquity
supplies us with further evidence of the paradoxes ailing the reflection model
and hence the need for a notion of prereflective self-consciousness.

Ubiquity is motivated by a particular view of consciousness which has been and
still is fairly dominant in Western philosophy and cognitive science. We can
call it the “self-registration view”. On this view, which has been elaborated
in many different ways, consciousness is due to a special “internal monitoring”
(Lycan 1997) or “self-registration mechanism” (Frank 2015)
enabling the mind to register its own processes. On this view, then, a
perception of an external object is conscious because not just the object is
registered by the mind but also the perception itself. Likewise, a thought is
conscious because not just the propositional content of the thought is
registered but also the thought itself. Mental process that are not thus
registered by the mind remain unconscious. Since self-registration of mental
processes by the mind amounts to a form of self-consciousness, we can summarize
this view by saying that self-consciousness underlies consciousness (=
Ubiquity). In other words: a mental process becomes conscious because the mind
is self-conscious with respect to that process, i.e. it is conscious of its own
mental process, which thereby is a conscious process. As said, this view of
consciousness has been and still is fairly dominant in philosophy and cognitive
science. It can be traced back to Aristotle, who argues in different places of
his work that mental processes are conscious because they have, besides their
external objects, also themselves as objects (De Anima III, 2,425b, 12; Metaphysics
Δ, 9). As Kenneth Williford notes: “Its distinguished history, prominence in
careful descriptions of consciousness, and visible if disputed place in the
philosophy of mind, AI, and neuroscience lend the claim substantial prima facie
credibility.” (Williford 2006: 111)

Problems for the higher-order theory of consciousness
So how does the self-registration view of consciousness provide further
evidence for the paradoxes of the reflection model and the subsequent need for
a notion of prereflective self-consciousness? The point is that the
self-registration view remains problematic as long as we operate within the
reflection model of self-consciousness. On the reflection model, the mind’s
awareness of a mental state, which lifts the latter into consciousness, is
conceptualised as an additional mental state, separate from the first. Mental
states are primarily aimed at external objects, and as such they are
unconscious. They become conscious only insofar as the mind turns its attention
away from those external objects and unto those mental states themselves. A
mental state, then, is lifted into consciousness by an additional mental act of
reflection. On closer inspection, however, this leads to several problems.

It leads, first of all, to the same problem of self-recognition that we first
encountered in the Mach example: if one becomes aware of oneself as an object,
how does one know that this object is oneself? One can recognize the object as
oneself only if one already has self-awareness to some extent. Or, in terms of
the self-registration view, how does the mind know that the mental state, of
which it becomes aware through an additional reflection, is indeed its own mental state? Clearly, this
already presupposes at least some minimal form of self-awareness, which must
therefore be prereflective and in a mode different from object-consciousness. Secondly,
the reflection model can be seen to lead to a vicious regress in the context of
the self-registration view of consciousness. If a mental state becomes
conscious only by becoming the object a further mental state, what then ensures
that this second state is also conscious? On the reflection model, a third act
would be required to lift the second act into consciousness, and a fourth act
to lift the third into consciousness, and so on. It seems, then, that the
self-registration view, when married to the reflection model of
self-consciousness, can ‘explain’ consciousness only by accepting an infinite
regress of higher-order mental states – which means, of course, that it cannot
explain consciousness at all.

This regress argument against the reflection model in the context of Ubiquity –
an argument first developed systematically by Fichte (1994: 111-12) and later by Brentano (1991: 153) – may well appear
to be fatal. There is, however, a way out for the reflection model, although
most philosophers would agree this is not an attractive solution. It is this:
hold on to the claim that mental states are lifted into consciousness by
higher-order states, but with the proviso that these higher-order states can
themselves remain unconscious. A higher-order state can still become conscious
by becoming the object of a still higher-order state, but the top (or, if you
prefer, the bottom) of the hierarchy is by definition an unconscious state.
With the above proviso in mind, this is no longer problematic. In this way,
consciousness is grounded in the unconscious. This is the solution adopted by
Higher-Order Representation (HOR) theories of consciousness, such as those
proposed by Armstrong (1968) and Rosenthal (2005). HOR theorists, then, remain
with the conceptual framework of the reflection model and work under the
assumption that all the objections against this model can be defused
theoretically.

As said, however, most philosophers find this solution to the regress problem
questionable. It seems paradoxical to explain consciousness in terms of
unconscious mental states. One objection that is often raised against the HOR
explanation of consciousness in terms of unconscious mental states is that it
violates Ubiquity. This thesis, after all, states that consciousness
presupposes self-consciousness. But how can the unconscious registration of a
mental state by a higher-order state be classified as self-consciousness? True,
it is a form of self-registration, insofar as the mind registers its own mental
states by means of higher-order states. But insofar as this self-registration
remains unconscious, it is questionable whether it amounts to
self-consciousness. The phrase “unconscious self-consciousness” is, after all, a
clear contradiction in terms. Insofar as HOR theories aim to explicate
Ubiquity, then, they seem to fail. As Williford writes: “Classic higher-order
representation (HOR) theories do not really do justice to the phenomenology
behind ubiquity… Such theories arguably push the self-representational aspect
of consciousness into the unconscious and thus betray the likely original
experiential motivation for their theories.” (Williford 2006: 111)

Is consciousness grounded in the unconscious?
One might come to the rescue of HOR theory by making a distinction between
strong Ubiquity and weak Ubiquity. Whereas strong Ubiquity states that
full-blown self-consciousness is necessary for consciousness, weak Ubiquity
states that mere self-registration of mental states by the mind is required,
where this self-registration can remain unconscious. There is something to be
said for weak Ubiquity, and thus for HOR theory. Weak Ubiquity still conforms
to the basic intuition behind the self-registration view of consciousness.
Moreover, HOR theorists ask, what is the alternative? The only way to avoid
both the regress of higher-order states and the grounding of consciousness in
the unconscious is to accept the existence of mental states that are not just
aware of other mental states (thereby lifting the latter into consciousness)
but also of themselves. Only such mental states, that are aware of themselves,
can do without higher-order states, as they lift themselves into consciousness
by being self-conscious. But HOR
theorists generally find this a paradoxical solution, and thus prefer their own
solution of grounding consciousness in unconscious higher-order states, which
they find – if not totally unparadoxical
– at least less paradoxical. As David
Armstrong puts it: “[I]t is impossible that the
introspecting and the thing introspected should be one and the same mental
state. A mental state
cannot be aware of itself, any more than a man can eat himself up.” (Armstrong
1968: 324) I will say more about this issue below.

In the final analysis, however, HOR theory remains unsatisfactory, for two
reasons at least. First of all, we do not just want to explain consciousness,
we also want to explain self-consciousness. Even if HOR theory succeeds in
explaining consciousness in terms of the mind’s self-registration of mental
states by higher-order mental states, the fact remains that this
self-registration occurs unconsciously and therefore falls short of
self-consciousness, since – as noted earlier – “unconscious self-consciousness”
is clearly paradoxical. Self-consciousness, then, seems definitely out of the
range of HOR theory. It is, moreover, questionable whether HOR theory can even
explain consciousness, given the Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). The HPC
seems to show that reductionism vis-à-vis consciousness is a dead end: it
suggests that consciousness cannot be explained in terms of something else,
i.e. something without consciousness, e.g. the brain as a purely physical
object. But such reduction of consciousness to something else is precisely what
HOR theory amounts to, as it explains conscious states in terms of unconscious
higher-order states. This should come as no surprise, since HOR theories are
often explicitly designed to facilitate a naturalist (i.e. materialist,
physicalist) explanation of consciousness (hence the title of Armstrong’s 1968
classic, A Materialist Theory of Mind).

David Chalmers coined the term
"Hard Problem of Consciousness"

The question, then, comes down to how one stands towards the HPC: is it merely
an extremely difficult problem which in the end can nevertheless be solved, or
is truly insoluble? Can consciousness be reduced to something else, or is it
irreducible? If one takes consciousness to be reducible, then HOR theory is,
perhaps, still a viable option (if it
can find an explanation for self-consciousness as well). Opinions on this will
no doubt continue to differ in the foreseeable future, although there seems to
be a growing majority leaning towards irreducibility. I, too, incline to
irreducibility, but to argue for it here would far exceed the bounds of this blog
post. In the following, therefore, I will simply assume the irreducibility of
consciousness and investigate the consequences. It follows, of course, that HOR
theory is off the table.

The unavoidability of prereflective self-consciousness
Let’s take stock. The self-registration view of consciousness explains the
latter in terms of self-consciousness: a mental state aimed at an external
object is conscious because the mind is not just aware of the external object
but also of the state itself. We saw, however, that the reflection model of
self-consciousness fails: the reflective turning around of object-consciousness
towards the subject cannot lead to self-knowledge, unless this reflection is
guided by a prior self-consciousness, which is therefore prereflective and in a
mode different from object-consciousness. Prereflective self-consciousness,
then, is what we need to explain consciousness as such, in line with the
self-registration view.

This also became apparent from the failure of HOR theory, where the reflection
model returns in the idea that mental states are lifted into consciousness by
additional reflections, i.e. higher-order states. We saw that HOR theory faces
the problem of self-recognition: how does the mind know that the mental state,
of which it is aware through a higher-order state, is its own mental state? Doesn’t this already presuppose
self-awareness? We also saw that HOR theory faces a dilemma: either accept an
infinite regress of higher-order states or accept that consciousness is
grounded in unconscious higher-order states. Both horns of the dilemma are
undesirable. An actual infinity of higher-order states not only violates the
phenomenology of consciousness, it is also mysterious how a finite object such
as the human brain can contain such infinite complexity. As for the second
horn, the grounding of consciousness in the unconsciousness, we noted that this
ignores the HPC.

So, to avoid both the regress and the grounding of consciousness in the
unconscious, we have to accept the existence of mental states that are not just
aware of other mental states (thereby lifting the latter into consciousness)
but also of themselves. Only such mental states, that are aware of themselves,
can do without higher-order states, as they lift themselves into consciousness,
by being self-conscious. This is
therefore what prereflective self-consciousness amounts to: a state of
consciousness that is immediately aware of itself, unmediated by reflections.

David Armstrong: "A mental state
cannot be aware of itself, anymore
than a man can eat himself up."

Is prereflective self-consciousness paradoxical?
But how, then, should we respond to the objection, raised by HOR theory, that
the notion of a mental state being aware of itself is incoherent? To repeat the
earlier quote from David Armstrong: “[I]t
is impossible that the introspecting and the thing introspected should be one
and the same mental state.
A mental state cannot be aware of itself, any more than a man can eat himself
up.” (Armstrong 1968: 324) Note, first of all, that this is just a dogmatic
assertion, without real argumentation. Also, the comparison of a self-aware
mental state with a man eating himself up goes limp. A man who would – per
impossibile – eat himself up entirely would not only kill himself; he would
disappear altogether. In that sense, eating oneself up is a form of total
self-negation. But a self-aware mental state is not self-negating – on the
contrary, it is rather self-affirming or even self-producing.

To be conscious of an object, after all, is judgmental in nature, in that (a)
one is conscious of the object as existing, such that existence is – at least
implicitly – affirmed of the object, and (b) one is aware of the object as
having one or more properties, which are therefore also affirmed of the object.
For example, when I take a walk in the countryside and I (veridically) see a
tree, I see the tree as existing and as green, as leafy, as beautiful, etc.
Likewise, then, when a mental state is self-aware, it is aware of itself as
existing and as having certain properties (e.g. awareness of itself).

A self-aware mental state, then, is self-affirmative, i.e. the complete
opposite of the self-negation inherent in eating oneself up. The latter is
clearly paradoxical, but where is the paradox in self-affirmation? Whereas “I
don’t exist” is obviously contradictory, “I exist” is a truism. Thus, I see no
paradox in speaking of a self-aware mental state… unless, perhaps, one
interprets the self-affirmation inherent in self-awareness in a strong
ontological fashion as self-production, as Fichte notoriously did. But
it is clear that the Fichtean concept of “self-positing” is not per se needed
to understand the self-affirmation inherent in self-awareness. I will return to
this issue at the end of this post.

Subject-object difference vs. subject-object identity
Is, then, Armstrong’s criticism of the notion of a self-aware mental state
completely unfounded? No, but whatever plausibility it has at the same time
makes clear why the reflection model of self-consciousness is inherently wrong.
Let me explain. The intuitive plausibility of Armstrong’s criticism derives
from the common idea that some kind of subject-object difference is intrinsic
to all consciousness, such that the conscious subject is always different from the object of which it is conscious. Hence
Armstrong’s bald statement that “it is impossible that the introspecting and
the thing introspected should be one and the same mental state”. But – and this
is what Armstrong overlooks – it is precisely this idea that underlies the
inadequacy of the reflection model of self-consciousness. In fact, we can use
the idea of subject-object difference to clarify what object-consciousness really is – a concept we haven’t properly
defined yet. Object-consciousness, we can say, is intentional consciousness and is as such inherently wedded to
subject-object difference. In
intentional consciousness, the subject is invariably aware of an object as
different from itself.

Self-consciousness, however, is
essentially characterized by subject-object identity. In
self-consciousness, the subject is its own object; thus, subject and object
coincide, they are numerically identical. Hence the inadequacy of the
reflection model. Object-consciousness and self-consciousness pull in different
directions: the first pulls towards subject-object difference, the second
towards subject-object identity. The reflection model has to bring about an
identity by means of conceptual tools that imply difference – an obvious
impossibility. Hence the many paradoxes ailing the model. It constantly has to
undo or supress the difference which its concepts equally constantly generate.
Already on this abstract level, then, we see that the reflection model is in
principle incapable of explaining self-consciousness: the aspect of
subject-object identity keeps eluding the difference engendering conceptuality
of reflection – like the tail eluding the self-chasing dog.

The non-intentional nature of prereflective self-consciousness
That the subject-object distinction is indeed the root of all trouble for the
reflection model becomes clearer when we take a closer look at the
phenomenological concept of intentionality. Intrinsic to that concept is the
idea that intentional consciousness is inherently “thetic” or “positional”,
such that consciousness essentially purports to be about an independent object,
i.e. an object existing independently from the consciousness aimed at it. This,
of course, harks back to what I said earlier about the affirmative nature of
consciousness, albeit that the phenomenological view of the positional nature
of consciousness is stronger. On the phenomenological view, consciousness not
just affirms the existence its object, it affirms that existence as independent
from itself. Thus, intentionality is seen to imply a strong subject-object
distinction. Phenomenologists put this by saying that the object is intended by
consciousness as transcending consciousness. Husserl referred to this
positing of objects as transcending our consciousness of them as “the natural
attitude”. As Sartre (1972: xxvii) put it: “All consciousness is positional in
that it transcends itself in order to reach an object.” It should be noted that
such a concept of consciousness as ‘intending beyond itself’ is by no means
unique to phenomenologists; many analytic philosophers held similar ideas,
notably (and influentially) Moore with his notion of the diaphanous nature of
consciousness as an argument for realism.

The point is that the failure of the reflection model becomes all the more
obvious if we understand object-consciousness in this strong sense as intending
its object as existing independently. If self-consciousness were
“self-transcending” in that sense, it would have to posit its object, a mysterious
entity called “the self”, as existing independently. But then, immediately, a
new regress would arise. For since self-consciousness is obviously a property
of this self, self-consciousness would have to posit the self as independently
being self-conscious. That is: self-consciousness would then have to presuppose
a prior self-consciousness on the part of its object, the self. And this prior
self-consciousness, since it too would posit its object as existing
independently, would also have to presuppose an already self-conscious self as
its object, and so on indefinitely (cf. Sartre 1972: xxvi-xxix; Frank 1991:
226). Again, then, we see that the reflection model leads to a regress. Hence
the conclusion, explicitly drawn by Sartre in particular, that prereflective
self-consciousness is non-intentional, i.e. not committed to a strong
subject-object distinction. Rather, in prereflective self-consciousness, the
subject is aware of itself as strictly identical with itself. Or in terms of
mental states, prereflective self-consciousness is a mental state that is aware
of itself as itself, not as something different.

Final considerations: Prereflective self-consciousness and Idealist Monism
Earlier we noted that Fichte interprets the self-positing inherent in
self-consciousness in a strong ontological fashion as self-creation. We now
begin to see the motivation behind that idea. If we cannot see prereflective
self-consciousness as aimed at the self as an independently existing object,
then the self becomes a function of prereflective self-consciousness, i.e. the
self only exists as the object of this self-awareness. In other words: a self
is that particular self only because it is aware of itself as that particular
person: Socrates, for example, is Socrates only because he takes himself to be
Socrates. As such, the self-creating aspect of prereflective self-consciousness
underlies the radical autonomy of the self, as Fichte stressed. Hence his
claims to the effect that the self is the prereflective
self-consciousness it has of itself and is as such self-creating. As Fichte put it: “What
was I, then, before I came to self-consciousness? The natural answer to this
question is: I did not exist at all,
for I was not an I. The I exists only insofar as it is conscious of itself.”
(Fichte 1991: 98) This bootstrapping of the self through self-consciousness
Fichte called “self-positing” (“Selbstsetzung”), saying things like: “the self
begins by an absolute positing of its own existence” (Fichte 1991: 99).Note,
by the way, that Fichte was not the first to draw attention to the
self-creating power of self-consciousness. Similar ideas can already be found
in Plotinus: see the previous
post
on this blog.

Baron von Münchhausen pulling him-
self from the swamp by his own hair.
Can self-consciousnss do the same?

We may take the idea that prereflective self-awareness is self-creating as its
own reductio ad absurdum. But note that the idea appears in different
light when we take into account the Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). For it
seems clear, at least to me, that the HPC implies Idealist Monism, which I
define as the claim that all of reality – including the physical – is
ultimately explained in terms of consciousness. The irreducibility of
consciousness obviously rules out Physicalist Monism (the claim that
“everything is physical”), but it is consistent with both Idealist Monism and
Ontological Dualism (i.e. the claim that reality consists of two different and
separate substances, consciousness and matter). But when we also take the
undeniable fact of mind-body interaction into account, the situation changes:
Ontological Dualism falls away, and Idealist Monism is left as the only viable
option. For if consciousness and matter are two different and separate
substances, as Dualism maintains, then it is utterly mysterious how they can
nevertheless interact (cf. the embarrassment of Descartes’ pineal gland). On an
Idealist Monist reading, however, mind-body interaction is ultimately
understandable as a form of mind-mind interaction, since Idealist Monism takes
matter to be a manifestation of consciousness. But if we take Idealist Monism
seriously, how then should we respond to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is
there something rather than nothing?” Note that on an Idealist Monist reading,
Leibniz’ question should be rephrased as: Why is there consciousness, rather
than nothing? Why does consciousness exist? And now the idea of the
self-creating power of prereflective self-consciousness is suddenly not so
absurd anymore…

The (onto)logical monstrosity of the placenta

According to Luce Irigaray: “One of the distinctive features of the female body is its toleration of the other’s growth within itself without incurring illness or death for either one of the living organisms.” (Irigaray 1993, Je, tu, nous, p.45) The toleration by the mother’s body consists in the fact that it renounces the immediate relationship with the fetus and allows this relationship to be mediated by a third, the placenta, which is related both to the mother through the uterine wall and to the fetus through the umbilical cord. The placenta can play this intermediating role thanks to its special anatomic status as a hybrid, a fusion of fetal and maternal tissues. From a biological viewpoint, the placenta is a synthesis of mother and fetus – a synthesis, however, which is relatively independent of both, since it functions as an external and independent organ. In one sense, the placenta is an organ belonging to both mother and fetus; in another sense, it belongs to neither, since it is literraly placed between them. It is this hybrid nature that enables the placenta to act as a filter and sluice between the separate blood circulations of mother and fetus (hence mother and fetus can have different blood types – a transfusion of foreign blood is normally extremely dangerous).

At the same time, however, this hybrid nature of the placenta seals its fate as a vanishing mediator – that is to say: its fate as waste, as the material leftover of the process of pregnancy and birth. There is a certain logic to this discarding of the placenta. The purpose of pregnancy is, after all, the production of child and mother as separate, autonomous beings. In light of that purpose, the placenta must appear as an (onto)logical monstrosity, a mythical Chimera, an incarnate contradiction that threatens the logical consistency of reality itself. This monstrosity appears concretely and strikingly in the bloody and shapeless mass which is the afterbirth. This grotesque mass cannot not be a skandalon (Greek for obstacle) for the tertium non datur of normal reality where the binary logic of A or not-A prevails: each being is one or the other, but not something in-between. Contrary to this binary logic, the placenta says insolently: tertium datur, there is a third between mother and fetus. Hence the placenta must disappear, must be buried or simply thrown away, in order to restore the logical consistency of our familiar reality. As the medium between mother and fetus, the placenta must have this monstrous character of being in-between, this incestuous fusion of fetal and maternal tissues (and in that sense, one can ask if not every medium of communication necessarily shares in this monstrosity). But for the very same reason, the placenta must necessarily disappear in the mutual mediation of mother and child as separate beings. In this mediation, the placenta is the vanishing mediator. Thus the “loss of the middle” – so deplored by conservatives – has here a positive function, constitutive of reality as such.

What is the Critique of Pure Interest?

How can I be free and yet do justice to the other? After all, to be free (autonomous) is to be the source of one’s own values. So how can I be autonomous without neglecting the intrinsic value of the other? Conversely, how can I respect the value of the other without losing my freedom by falling into heteronomy? In short, is there a third between autonomy and heteronomy?

And is there a better term for this new form of freedom – this third between autonomy and heteronomy – than “pure interest”? For as has been pointed out by many others (notably Martin Heidegger and William Desmond), the original Latin verb “interesse” carries a nice ambiguity. Literally it means “being between” (“inter” = between, “esse” = being). From the Middle Ages to the present, however, the verb “interesse” gained a second meaning, namely (and obviously) that of having an interest, of finding someone or something interesting. The ‘nicety’ of this ambiguity is that it suggests how our ‘interests’ (stakes, desires, investments, passions) are always expressions of our inter-esse, our being between others. Thus we already start to see how the concept of interesse can be used to grasp that sought ofter new form of freedom, the third position between autonomy and heteronomy. Being between others, we are fundamentally influenced by them, our desires and passions are directed at them, our love and energy (and not to forget a lot of money!) are invested in them. One’s ‘free will’ is therefore always already tuned to and by the other: autonomy and heteronomy mingle. Here the ambiguity of “interest” helps us even further, since it can mean both private or self-interest (autonomy, egoism) and selfless interest in the other (heteronomy, altruism, the law of the Other – compare the Kantian “interesseloses Interese” towards beauty). With “pure interest” I want to designate the coincidence of all three aspects of interesse: 1) being in-between, 2) self-interest, 3) selfless interest in the other.

a) It is pure in the ethical sense of being free from selfishness and domination of one by the other: in their being-in-between self and other exist only in relation to each other (their existence is the ‘happening’ between them) so that self-interest (autonomy) and the interest of the other (heteronomy) coincide.

b) It is pure in the transcendental (Kantian) sense: the relationship between one and other is ontologically prior to their empirical existence as different beings – thus their interrelation is the transcendental precondition their empirical existence.

c) It is pure in the utopian sense: the ethical ideal, although contained in the transcendental structure of being-in-between, is never fully reallized in practice, at the empirical level of human existence, where selfishness and domination are indeed the order of the day – in that sense, the actuality of human existence lags behind what it potentially is: thus pure interest remains pure, utopian potency.

In my view, this discrepancy between the transcendental and empirical levels of existence explains the utopian tendency in human history, the emergence and slow development of egalitarian relationships in human society – in short: from the Athenian ideal of democracy for some (not slaves) to the modern ideal of democracy for everyone to the postmodern ideal of anarchic pluralism...

The aim of the critique of pure interest is to further this utopian (messianic, revolutionary) development, that is, to fully unleash the powers of this pure potency. It is first and foremost a critique in the Kantian sense: an investigation into the transcendental interrelation that underlies the possibility of pure interest at the empirical level. The critique of pure interest, in other words, asks the question: How is pure interest empirically possible? How can autonomy and heteronomy go together to form a new form of freedom? In my view this question is crucial to the postmodern and (neo)conservative times we live in, dominated by economic and cultural crises and the growing importance of communication technology for the network societies in which we live, where to be connected (i.e. to be between) is everything.

My guideline – my original inspiration so to speak – in this critique of pure interest is what I call the Marxist Christology of the vanishing mediator. It hinges on the intuition that the transcendental precondition of pure interest should be sought in the vanishing mediator. I borrow this concept from (post)modern philospophers like Frederick Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, although I use it in my own rather idiosyncratic way. For me, the vanishing mediator is what makes the sought after third between autonomy and heteronomy possible. This third requires a reconciliation between self and other, such that the will of the self and the value of the other become mutually enforcing instead of being in conflict. And this reconciliation requires a mediator, a medium that provides the common ground on which self and other can meet. Now the Marxist-Christological wager of my critique is the claim that this mediator must be essentially vanishing in order to do its job. Otherwise the medium will remain between self and other, blocking their full coming together.

This is in fact a general truth about media: in order to function properly as media, they have to disappear in the process of mediation. Spoken language is a good example: it makes intersubjective communication possible because it disappears in the act of communiction. If it didn’t disappear, speech would literally become a wall of sound standing between us, directing attention to itself rather than to the notions and feelings of the communicating subjects. In a sense, then, the theory of the vanishing mediator is also a theory about communication and media in general. Yet my focus will mainly be on the vanishing mediator as a medium between the divergent interests of self and other, making a third between autonomy and heteronomy possible.

So what does this have to do with Marxism and Christology?

First of all, notice that this view of the vanishing mediator finds its most paradigmatic expression in the messianic figure of Christ as the divine mediator. Christ had to disappear from the midst of men, that is, he had to die on the cross, in order to reconcile mankind with God and with itself.

So is this simply a believer’s blog? Do I offer nothing more than faith, albeit helped by the handmaiden of philosophy? Do I make religion the master of rationality? Am I nothing more than one of those dangerous and potentially violent fundamentalists?

Not at all… Well, at least that’s not my intention. Note that my quest is for a third between autonomy and heteronomy (in other words: this elusive ‘third’ is my Holy Grail). And this places my undertaking squarely between autonomous, critical thought on the one hand and heteronomous, dogmatic faith on the other. That is, on my quest for the vanishing mediator I have to straddle the fine line (or war zone) between rationality and religion, between concept and intuition, between critique and domatism, between cold logic and emotion, between head and heart, between yang and yin, between modernity and pre-/postmodernity… Exactly how this balancing act will work out is something I am anxious to find out. Hence this blog.

And hence my use of the nice oxymoron “Christology” – a term that combines the autonomous rationality of logic with the heteronomy of faith in Christ (after all, “Christology” means the logos of Christ). This conjunction of rationality and religion is precisely the mode my investigation must take, as I explained above. Of course, the same oxymoron can be found in the term “theology” but obviously my focus on Christ implies the primacy of “Christology”.

But why a Marxist Christology?

Well, first of all, notice that my problem statement – “Is there a third between autonomy and heteronomy?” – is decidedly dialectical. The reconciliation of the opposition between self and other (or thesis and antithesis) is nothing more or less than the core business of the dialectical method as practiced by Hegel and Marx. In fact, the very term “mediation” derives from the dialectical tradition in philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Marx (all four philosophers will figure prominently on this blog).

By developing a Christology of the vanishing mediator, I am decidedly on the side of the materialist Marx as opposed to the idealist Hegel. As an idealist, Hegel wanted to think the Absolute (that is, God) as subject, not as object (see Hegel’s preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit). In contrast, the Christology of the vanishing mediator aims to understand the Absolute neither as subject (as Hegel did) nor as object (as Hegel accused Spinoza of doing) but rather as what happens between subject and object (or self and other). In this perspective, dialectical negativity – which Hegel saw as the fundamental activity of the subject towards the object – turns out to be an autonomous process that constitutes and therefore precedes both self and other. Hegel’s notorious negation of the negation can thus be reworked as the self-negation of this absolute negativity (in Christological terms: the self-sacrifice of God) which thereby functions as the vanishing mediator in the meeting of self and other. As I hope to make clear in the rest of this blog, this is all in line with Marx’s turning inside out (Umstulpüng) of Hegel’s dialectic.

But in order to give a preliminary clarification of the Marxist aspect of my Christology, it is perhaps better to focus on the ethics that follows from it. This is an ethics of imitatio Christi, the passionate imitation of Christ as vanishing mediator. Following Christ, we should spend ourselves, give ourselves completely as vanishing mediators for those around us. More generally, we should let all vanishing mediators do their job, that is to say: we should let them vanish. Unfortunately, due to its greed and idolatry, mankind (and Western man in particular) is often unable to let go, to accept loss as an inevitable, necessary part of reality. We hold on to the vanishing mediator, turning it into our possession, thereby frustrating its proper function. People are generally unreconciled because they make the mediator their private property, which thus becomes a stumbling block rather than a reconciler. For many centuries the Church has done this to Christ himself, unable to accept the vanishing nature of Christ, turning him into an idol justifying the Church’s imperial claims. But in modern times this sickness of mankind, the inability to let go of the vanishing mediator, has taken the form of capitalism. For in modern social life, money is the means of exchange, the mediator par excellence (next to language). And there is nothing wrong with that as long as money is allowed to do its job: to vanish from one’s pocket during one’s exchanges with others. But in capitalism, money is accumulated in capital. The vanishing mediator no longer vanishes but keeps returning for ever growing profits. Thus robbed of its proper function, the mediator adds to the strife among men instead of solving it. Hence our duty to spend ourselves with revolutionary passion, to give ourselves as the vanishing mediators of modern social life by breaking the stiffling power of capital. In that sense, Marx was the greatest imitator of Christ in modern times!

This Marxist commitment adds a second meaning to my critique of pure interest, which is not just a critique in the Kantian sense (an investigation into the transcendental condition of freedom between autonomy and heteronomy) but also a Marxist critique of pure interest in the economic sense, namely the return on investment.

In my future posts, I will publish fragments that elucidate different aspects of my Marxist Christology. I have been working on this theory for more or less ten years now, originally inspired by the Dutch philosopher Henk Oosterling and his musings on “the between” (though he would probably recoil in horror if he saw the direction I am taking with this concept). Some of the other thinkers that inspired me were Martin Buber on the dialogical between, Heidegger on the ontological between, Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on the agonistic between, Voegelin and Desmond on the Platonic between (metaxy), Kant on imagination as the mediator between understanding and sensibility, Derrida on différance, René Girard on the scapegoat mechanism, Sloterdijk on intersubjective spheres, Plato on dialogue, Aristotle on topos and middle term, Žižek obviously though I find his treatments of the vanishing mediator to be far from systematically satisfying (which holds for all of his thought), and last but not least Hegel and Marx. All these philosophers (and many others) will be discussed in future posts. Finally I would also like to mention Taoism as major source of influence.

The critique of pure interest – that is, the Marxist Christology of the vanishing mediator – is still in statu nascendi. This blog traces its development. Hence, the fragmentary nature of what I am about to offer on this blog. It is systematic, but it is not a system. In a sense what comes out on this blog is a procession of the many turts I have accumulated over the years… Not a very refreshing image, but to the point nevertheless. Shit is one of the most important vanishing mediators in human life. No good metabolism can do without it. In that sense Christ can be defined as divine Shit…

Marx on "sensuous activity"

The notion ofpraxis enables Marx to conceive of the interrelation between human subject and material object as a fundamental, ontological interaction, in which neither is primary and on which both are dependent. It is this ontological orientation that allows Marx in the first Thesis on Feuerbach to refer to “the thing, reality” itself as praxis, as the realm of sensory activity in which man and nature determine each other reciprocally. Thus the relation between man and nature (subject and object) should, according to Marx, be understood as an internal relation, where the relata do not exist independently, in contrast to an external relation, where the relata influence each other alternately while actually remaining separate. This ontological significance can also be seen from Marx’s notion of “sensuous activity” if it is taken in the epistemological sense of sensory perception. One could say that this epistemological sense is integrated in the comprehensive social-practical sense of “sensuous activity” as the human collaboration in working upon nature. After all, in his labor man also senses himself and his encounter with the world: he sees his objects and tools, he experiences fatigue and the resistance of matter but also the pleasure of his activity and the beauty (or ugliness) of the worked upon object. Thisesthetic aspect of labor is important to Marx: truly human, ie unalienated labor is for him as much artistic activity as it is the satisfaction of basic human needs, and the unalienated product of labor is ultimately also a work of art. Thus aisthesis (Greek: sensory experience) forms an integral part of Marx’s notion of praxis.

The ontological ambiguity of sensory qualitiesSo what about the ontological interaction between subject and object that occurs in praxis? Does this also occur in the aisthesis of sensory perception? In fact, it does. This is exactly what Kant tried to explain when he focused on the interaction of receptivity and spontaneity in sensation, where a fusion takes place of subjective activity and passivity before the object. This fusion is shown in the ambiguous nature of sensory qualities such as color, sound, smell, taste, warmth and tactility. On the one hand, such “qualia” are inherently subjective because they exist only in a subject’s perceptual awareness of them. Thus Berkeley’s idealistic formula esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) surely applies to qualia, which is the reason why the philosophical tradition speaks of them as mere “secondary qualities” (as opposed to an object’s primary qualities, ie those that exist independently of the perceiving subject). Yet, on the other hand, qualia also have something undeniably objective about them, bound as they are to some external object whose properties they are (thus we say: the rose is red, the water is warm). Thus qualia are like a joint membrane between subject and object where they meet and enter into each other. William Desmond, the author of Being and the Between, is one of the very few philosophers who notice this strange ontological status of qualia between subjective and objective. He writes: “secondary qualities have an unyielding equivocity, since their ontological status is finally uncertain. For this status is distributed between “something” in the thing itself, its powers, and the relativity of that “something” to mind.”Marx’s rehabilitation of the sensuousThe fact that thisintermediate status of qualia is rarely observed, has everything to do with the traditional opposition between idealism and materialism – precisely the opposition Marx wants to overcome in the first Thesis on Feuerbach. Because traditional materialism stresses one-sidedly the passivity of man with respect to nature, it can understand qualia only as secondary, ie as mere effects in consciousness caused by external objects. And because idealism, in contrast, stresses one-sidedly the (mental) activity of the human subject, it cannot understand qualia as coming from external objects. The result is that materialism and idealism, precisely because of their opposing positions (passivity vs. activity), come to a surprisingly unanimous opinion about the ontological status of sensory qualities: they are merely subjective and not objective. Thus the traditional contrast in philosophy between materialism and idealism has led to a systematic disregard of the true in-between status of sensory qualities. Marx was in a sense the first to rehabilitate that true status of the sensory by taking up a position between materialism and idealism. That seems to be one of the main reasons why Marx in the first Thesis on Feuerbach focuses specifically on sensation, that is, on “reality, sensuousness” which in traditional materialism “is conceived only in the form of the object or of intuition, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively”. Marx’s point is therefore not that man as part of nature is a sensuous being, rather his point is that reality as such is sensuous, i.e. praxis, the reciprocal determinationofsubject and object that takes place in sensation. For Marx, the sensuous is the medium (ie the middle, the “between”) in which subject and object – man and nature – meet and determine each other.

White page anxiety

Is the blank white page – as the abyss of meaninglessness into which the blocked writer falls – not a perfect image (an imageless image) of the nothing in contrast to which something can appear? Is the tumbling of the blocked writer into this white abyss not a kind of death, a ‘symbolic’ death, in which on the one hand the authorial ego disintegrates, but which at the same time opens up in the writer a radical freedom – the freedom to create sense out of the nothing of non-sense? And the writer who in this way conquers his writer's block, precisely by embracing it, by writing from the depths of the abyss of meaninglessness that lies before him – is this liberated writer than not also an accomplice of Being? Doesn’t his disintegrated ego become an empty space – as a kind of internalization of the white page – in which reality can come to appearance? Doesn’t his writing then coincide with the ontological productivity of Being itself? And doesn’t this explain the pure desire to write, to write for the sake of writing, as a desire to participate in Being, to let the blank page be the place where the Event of reality can take place, no matter what happens exactly?

The attraction of the abyssIn the lightof these questions there is a remarkable agreement between writer’s block and what Sartre calls the “attraction of the abyss”. Sartre describes the well-known experience of standing in front of a gaping depth (e.g. before a ravine in the mountains or on the roof of a tall building) and having the seemingly irrational inclination to go to the edge, to defy the fear and vertigo and to look straigt into the deep – an inclination which can even take the frightening form of an urge to actually throw oneself into the depth. The abyss repels but it also draws us. Thus we go back and forth, oscillating between safe distance and deadly closeness. Sartre explains this attraction of the abyss in a semi Heideggerian (for mainly Hegelian) way, such that it is our own groundless freedom that attracts us in the abyss: by defying death, we prove our freedom, our radical independence from all external authority, even the authority of biological life as such. In a more Heideggerian way we can understand the attraction of the abyss as not just revolving around our freedom but also – in relation to that freedom – as revolving around the experience of Being itself, of the miraculous fact that there is something rather than nothing. In the liberating light of threatening death, our being in the world here and now appears so much more intense. This intensity of the experience of Being – this ontological “Steigerung des Lebens” (Nietzsche) – is the ‘object’ of our desire as we approach the edge of the abyss.

Itis, I think, the same desire that binds the blocked writer to his blank page. His suffering is exactly the oscillation described by Sartre, between revulsion and rapprochement, between getting up and walking away from the white abyss on his desk and getting back to it in order to finally write something – the oscillation between the apparently sane thought “Isn’t it better to call it quits? For I have nothing to say” and the seemingly aburd thought “I can’t stop, for I have nothing to say”. What repels the blocked writer in the white page, the senseless nothing that emerges out of it, is also what attracts him, because the Being of beings is experienced all the more lively in contrast to the nothing. This is one of the paradoxes of being a writer, of being someone who experiences his “Steigerung des Lebens” by withdrawing from the bustling life (the vita activa), retiring into a lonely room, reducing all his movements to the the minimal movement of a pen on paper or fingers on a keyboard. Behind this solitary confinement in a room, however, lies an even greater paradox, namely that the “Steigerung des Lebens” in writing becomes that much greater the more the act of writing itself fails, the more the writer runs aground in writer’s block. The more intense the blank page as the abyss of meaninglessness reveals itself to the writer, the more intense his experience of Being becomes. The more blocked he is, the more ‘in touch’ with the Event he becomes. The less he can say, the more his words express the ontological productivity of Being as such.

A clearing in a forest of lettersHeidegger describesthinking about Being as a Holzweg, a dead end ‘wood’-road through a forest, made by foresters and leading to an empty spot, a clearing (Lichtung) where the trees have been felled. Heidegger’s point is that ontological thinking is a similarly dead-end road, in the sense that it does not lead to rational conclusions about ‘things’ (beings) that can be put into words. Ontological thought rather results in a conceptual void or silence in discourse. Like the empty, bright spot in the forest makes – by way of contrast – the dark, dense forest all the more present, so the silent void in which ontological thinking results makes the experience of Being all the more emphatic. But the writer who runs aground in writer’s block – isn’t he travelling a similar dead-end Holzweg? The blank page at which the blocked writer arrives after struggling through a forest of text – is this not also a kind of clearing? And here of course I do not primarily mean the clearing left by the actual trees that had to be felled to make the paper possible. Although that’s surely a nice image of what I mean.

Communism as a loss of center? “...we are right in the middle of the middle that connects us.” This reminds me of the famous thesis of the heretical Dominican and priest Giordano Bruno, to the effect that in an infinite circle the center is everywhere. Impressed by Copernicus' discovery that the universe revolves not around the earth but the earth around the sun, and on the basis of the hypothesis that our sun is only one star among many other stars, Bruno arrived at the idea that the universe is infinite and consists of many solar systems similar to our own. To compensate for the earthly loss of the center position as it were, Bruno implied that the earth is still in a sense the center, because “we can assert with certainty that the universe is all center, or that the center of the universe is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere.” (1584)

Isn’t this a comforting thought? The center is here and now. I am the center of the universe. Everything revolves around me. And yet everything revolves not around me but around you and him and her and them... At the same time the center is always elsewhere. Wasn’t it because of this revolutionary idea that Bruno was burned as heretic at the stake? Officially, he had to burn for the heresies of docetism (the denial of Jesus' humanity) and pantheism. But didn’t his Copernican heliocentrism and decenterment of the earth play some rol in his condemnation by the Church, as is often suspected? That the earth – and hence man – is not the center of creation was something the Church could not accept. Thus, however, the Church ignored the essential ambiguity of Bruno's thesis that in an infinite circle the center is everywhere – so always elsewhere, but also always here. The center position is shared with others – and that's exactly what the Church could not and still can not do: share the centre. Or is my reading of Bruno's thesis too hippie-like, too multi-cultural, too positive, too optimistic, too communist (shared ownership of the medium)? For how can the center be both here and elsewhere? Is this not the same thing as saying that there is no center at all? Isn’t Bruno’s thesis the beginning of the modern “loss of the center” which in later centuries has been and still is so regretted by conservatism? Because - oh Lord! – without a meaningful, powerful, commanding, controlling transcendent center so-called “permissive society” degenerates into the chaos of anarchy! Just read Yeats’ The Second Coming:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The empty throne in modern art In fact, I never really understood the conservative jeremiad about the loss of the center. Of course, I also see that our society is in serious difficulty: on the one hand there is shocking self-enrichment, on the other hand there is poverty, hunger, war, alienating individualism, loss of self in drink and drugs... “The ceremony of innocence is drowned” indeed. But is this due to the loss of the center? I doubt it – and I doubt it especially in the context of Christian conservatism, where the topos of the lost center originates. One locus classicus in this regard is the book Verlust der Mitte (1948) by the art historian Hans Sedlmayr. In this book he analyzes how the central position of man – religiously founded in the divine status of the man Jesus – slowly disappeared from modern art. Was every art form until the 18th century part of a sacred Gesamtkunstwerk in which divine man occupied the central place (a Gesamtkunstwerk formed by the complex of church and palace), in the following centuries the various art forms gained a life of their own: they became ‘autonomous’ by breaking away from the sacred and humanistic context of Christianity. Harking back to Blaise Pascal – “Leaving the middle means leaving humanity” – Sedlmayer analyses this development as a dehumanization of art. From then on, the inhuman comes to the fore in modern art: the indifference of nature and matter, the rapacious development of technology and industry, the self-reflective and abstract forms of autonomous art. In this way, Sedlemayer says, art reflects a broader social process of loss of the center, the downfall of Christian humanism. Art is not able to reverse that process (with respect to underlying social processes, art is powerless). Nevertheless, according to Sedlmayr, modern art has the crucial task of keeping the memory of the lost center alive for future generations: “Then at least the awareness must stay alive, that the lost center is the throne left empty for the perfect human, the Godman.”

I must admit that I find this a beautiful, fascinating image: the lost center in modern art as an empty throne – a throne that by its very emptiness refers to the missing king. But it is also this image which for me manifests the paradox of Christian conservatism. For the lost center as the empty throne of the divine man? Is this not par excellence the empty cross, referring to the removed, dead body of the Godman Christ? Is this divine throne not Golgotha, the “mountain of skulls” on which the crucified Jesus throned, crowned with a wreath of thorns? (And this in turn reminds me of the negative theology of the Indian logician Adi Shankara, who paints a picture of Nirguna-Brahman as a God without attributes, sitting on a mountain of negations. Isn’t Golgotha that mountain? Isn’t the cross of Jesus precisely the cross of negation, referring back to the crossed out being of his mortal flesh?) A picture means a thousand words, they say. Is this not true here? Doesn’t the picture of Golgotha make clear in one stroke that the center as the throne of the divine man must be empty, that this emptiness necessarily follows from the core of the Christian doctrine? For was the sacrifice of Christ as Mediator not necessary to eliminate human sinfulness, to reconcile man with God and thereby with his fellow man? Is the loss of the center in this sense not precisely the condition of the unity of the Christian community, its unification in the Holy Spirit?Hegel on Christ In this regard Christian conservatives should have listened better to one of their heroes, namely Hegel (who could sublate all earthly contradictions in the thought of the Absolute Spirit, thereby in practice leaving everything as it was, to the delight of the Prussian regime). In the Geist des Christentums Hegel explains that as long as Jesus lived among his followers, he formed a “dividing wall” (“Scheidewand”) on the one hand between the followers themselves, and on the other between them and God:

“As long as he lived among them, they were only believers; for they were not based on themselves; Jesus was their teacher and master, an individual center on which they depended; they did not yet have their own, independent life; the Spirit of Jesus ruled them; but after his removal this objectivity, this dividing wall between them and God, also fell away; and the Spirit of God was able to revive her whole being.”

In this regard Hegel was undoubtedly one of the German children of Luther, who deprived the Catholic priest of his mediator function in order to make the relationship between believer and God im-mediate. In this Protestant sense, Jesus is portrayed by Hegel as “the good priest” who makes himself superfluous and disappears into the relation between God and man (in other words: the only good priest is a dead priest, or in terms of Yeats: the only center is a good dead center). But one would underestimate the importance for Hegel of Jesus as vanishing mediator if one sees here only the influence of Luther. In fact, the concept of the vanishing mediator is an intrinsic part of Hegel’s dialectic, which is after all the atoning mediation of opposites. To truly bring opposites together, the mediator must – like Jesus – disappear from their midst. This is clearly argued by Herbert Scheit in his book Geist und Gemeinde: Religion und Politik von Zum Verhältnis bei Hegel (where I encountered this link between Hegel’s dialectic and his conception of Jesus for the first time). Concerning the above passage of Hegel on the necessity of Jesus’ disappearance, Scheit notes:

“This applies to every mediation, if it really wants to earn that name: mediation implies not just a third, a middle, it sublates itself in the unit of the mediated ones, which is then a “mediated immediacy”.”

Vinculum vincolorum For Hegel, then, the goal of every mediation is what he calls “mediated immediacy”, the synthesis of opposites between which the mediator has disappeared. In that sense one can say, referring to Hegel, that the vanishing mediator is a universal given, or rather a universal absence, a disappearance that is ‘active’ in every process of mediation. In the light of this universality of the vanishing mediator, should we not also say – to return to Bruno’s thesis – that the center of the universe is not everywhere but nowhere, as a constitutive loss that connects everything? In that respect it seems significant that physicists refer to the four basic forces underlying the universe (gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces) preferably as “interactions”. This is because the “forces of nature” alsways manifest themselves as interactions between objects, reciprocal mediations in which energy is exchanged. If we take the idea of the vanishing mediator seriously, should we not say that these interactions, which form the causal network of the universe, presuppose just as many vanishing mediators? And should we not also say that these mysterious media are as many incarnations of God, the dying middle that holds everything together, precisely through his death? Do we not arrive here at a Christological cosmology, in which Christ – the dying God – acts as the universal mediator? As Paul says about Christ: “In him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1: 17)

This is admittedly not a very original idea. To my knowledge, a similar cosmological interpretation of Christianity can already be found in the work of the French Catholic-pragmatist philosopher Maurice Blondel, who in this context spoke of “panchristism” – an idea that only rarely shows up in his published work, however, and exercised little influence on other thinkers (an important exception is Teilhard de Chardin). From the little that Blondel has written about it, it becomes clear that he assigns to Christ a cosmic function: without the intervention of the Incarnate Word, nothing in the universe can have a stable existence. More interesting than Blondel’s rather vague and inchoate ideas about panchristism, however, is his reference to Leibniz in this context. Blondel used Leibniz’s notion of the vinculum substantiale – the substantial chain – to denote the cosmic, connecting function of Christ, who is the vinculum vincolorum, the chain of chains.The God of Leibniz and the surplus value of Blondel For Leibniz, the vinculum substantiale is the extra relationship added by God to a collection of monads to forge them together into one substance. The fact that Leibniz had to resort to such an emergency measure – for that’s what it is, of course – has to do with a peculiar aspect (a weakness, if you ask me) of his philosophy, the monadology. On the one hand, one finds in Leibniz the famous thesis that every monad reflects all other monads. In that sense, every monad exists only in relation to others, and for Leibniz this interrelationship constitues the harmony of the universe. Thus Leibniz: “Now this coherence or congruence of all created things with each other […] means that each simple substance has relations that express all others, and that it is consequently a perpetual living mirror of the universe.” On the other hand, one finds in him the equally famous assertion that the monads are windowless, because they are the basic units of reality and are as such timeless, unchangeable and therefore closed off from one another, incapable of mutual influence (because that would imply change in the monades). “The Monads have no windows through which anything can go in or out.” The difficult question then arises, of course, how – if communication between monads is impossible - they can nevertheless stand to each other in harmonious relationships, to mirror each other and form connections in compex substances. Here Leibniz invokes God as the solution (always useful, such a miracle worker). According to Leibniz, it is the Super-Monad God who establishes all relations between the monads. As he writes in the Discourse on metaphysics: “Hence God alone brings about liaison and communication of substances, and it is through him that the phenomena of the ones meet and agree with those of the others and consequently that there is reality in our perceptions.” In short: God is the universal medium of communication! But doesn’t Leibniz make a category mistake when he interprets this mediating God as a Super-Monad? Although God is by His omnipotence distinguished from all other monads, He basically remains for Leibniz a monad among monads, their primus inter pares. Should we not, on the basis of the universality of the vanishing mediator, say that God can perform this mediator function only by escaping the order of the monads? Should we not make an ontological distinction here between on the one hand the ontic order of (complex) substances and on the other the transcendent order of the vanishing mediator, which is constitutively lacking from the ontic order? Isn’t this the surplus value of Blondel's panchristism, his identification of Leibniz’s vinculum substantiale with Christ, the Godman who died on the cross?

Golgotha by Wild Bill Garnett

The Indian Vedantic philosopher Adi Shankara describes Nirguna-Brahman as a God without attributes, sitting on a mountain of negations. Isn’t Golgotha that mountain? Isn’t the cross of Jesus precisely the cross of negation, referring back to the crossed out being of his mortal flesh?

Medium as milieu, milieu as medium

Of course, language is notour only medium. We relate to others by means of numerous media, from the light that allows us to see and be seen to the clothes through which we express our public personalities, from the music that synchronizes dancers to money as a medium of exchange between individuals... In this respect, the postmodern, mediatized network society is nothing new. Digial media are merely the high-tech continuation of the typically human, mediated relation to the other. As embodied, sensory beings, we need to rely on material means in our dealings with others. This contact is never direct, never im-mediate: there is no telepathy. The communication of ‘spiritual’ contents (meanings, intentions) is always materially mediated. The only direct contact possible for us is exactly the contact with the material means or medium through which we reach for something or someone else. The contact with the medium itself cannot be mediated, at the risk of an infinite regression of media (which would make mediated contact with something else entirely impossible). Marx formulates this insight with respect to the technical means of production as follows: “The object of which the laborer takes immediate control [during the proces if production, PS] is not the worked upon object [Arbeitsgegenstand], but the means of production [Arbeitsmittel].” In this sense we can speak of the immediacy of technology to humans.

Immediacy of the mediumBut this unmediated ‘contact’ with the medium makes it clear that an immediate contact is strictly speaking impossible. For in the unmediated ‘contact’ with the medium, the medium itself is not the goal of the contact, i.e. the theme of the contact-seeking attention: this intended theme is the other to be reached through the medium. The medium itself is indeed immediately ‘given’ but it is also unthematically ‘given’ to the subject using the medium. The immediate contact with the medium remains unconscious. Conscious contact, however, is always materially mediated. Once the subject becomes aware of his contact with the medium, it no longer functions as a medium but as an object of conscious attention – an object in turn given to consciousness through another medium. A blind man, for example, uses his cane to feel the environment, and in that sense the cane – qua medium – is an extension of his feeling hand and arm, like an antenna, with which he has an immediate but unthematic contact. As soon as the blind man becomes aware of his cane, however, at that moment the immediate contact with it stops and his hand becomes the new medium through which he feels the cane. In turn, the hand stops being the sensitive medium as soon as the blind man tries to feel it with his other hand: the first hand becomes an object, the second hand becomes the feeling medium through which that object is given. In this way one’s conscious contact with one's surroundings – even with one’s own objectified body – is always mediated by a more primary environment, an unthematically given “immediate milieu” so to speak, namely the material medium through which we perceive and interact with others. In the first place that immediate environment – that mediating milieu – is the ek-static body, the unobjectified body that stands out toward the world (Greek: “ek” = out, “stasis” = stand). Our focus on the world – or rather on the other in the world – always starts from the looking, feeling, tasting, smelling and hearing body. “Consciousness is”, as Merleau-Ponty writes, “being toward the thing through the intermediary of the body.” As Merleau-Ponty has shown with abundant detail, that focus on the world through the body always involves a hiddenness, a retreat, a “recess of the body” in unconscious immediacy. The body as the primary medium is never object of conscious attention. As such the ek-static body underlies all the other media we use. Obviously, we use external media always through our bodies: we press our ear to the mobile phone, we move the mouse with our hand, we focus our eyes on the screen. In this sense we can say with McLuhan that media are extensions of our bodies, like the cane of the blind man is an extension of his hand scanning the environment. This partly in the superficial sense that we greatly extend the reach of our bodies by using media: microscopes allow us to see the very small and near, telescopes allow us to see the very large and distant, cranes allow us to lift enormous weights, computers allow us to extend our memory and computing power...

Instrumentalized fleshBut media are also extensions of our body in the more interesting sense that the unthematic immediacy of the ek-static body is passed on to the external media we use. The external media share in the unconsciousness of the medial body. The cane, with which the blind man scans his environment, is not itself thematically given but ‘merges’ with the scanning hand. The mobile phone ‘merges’ with the ear through which we hear the other. The mouse ‘merges’ with the hand with which we navigate the computer screen. Even the light, when we see objects, is an extension of the eye: as the medium of visibility, the light shares in the unthematic immediacy of the eye itself – the light that makes everything visible, remains itself invisible and is ‘dark’ so to speak. In this way we can understand Marx’s claim that the entire world as man’s means of living [Lebensmittel] is his “inorganic body”. Merleau-Ponty speaks in this regard of “the flesh of the world”, where “flesh” is synonymous with the unthematic immediacy of the ek-static body. In that sense, all the media through which we relate to an other – including light as the medium of visibility – are part of this flesh: the light is luminous flesh, the crane is mechanical flesh, the computer and the mobile phone and the iPad and such are digtal flesh… This ‘mediating flesh’ – the ‘meat of the medium’ – constitutes our immediate environment, our milieu. One could even argue that this is the correct definition of “milieu” as such, namely to be our mediating flesh. A milieu, after all, is an environment in which one is immersed, it surrounds and embeds. And the primary surrounding is the immediate environment, i.e. the flesh of the ek-static body and its mediating extensions. The milieu, then, is first and foremost the environment of media in which one is immersed. From this perspective, ​the statement above regarding language – that the medium is the milieu – can also be chiastically reversed: the milieu is essentially medium. The above formula of “mediating milieu” is therefore strictly speaking a pleonasm. The milieu is – to repeat an earlier insight – not just a middle position in that we live in the middle of it, but also in the sense that it is our medium and as such is the middle between us and the other. That we live in a milieu, then, means something like: we are right in the middle of the middle that connects us.